


Set Off Like Geese

by Hannah



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Autism, Depression, Disability, Friendship, Gen, Mental Illness, Schizophrenia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-05-16 06:50:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 80,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14806418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hannah/pseuds/Hannah
Summary: There's still a Sunnydale. There's still a Buffy Summers living on Revello Drive. There's still strange people with business of their own coming to town. Except this time around, Spike and Drusilla didn't come for the Hellmouth or the Slayer. They weren’t looking for power or fame or glory, and they weren't staying so they could end the world. This time around, it was just as good a place as any other to stop for a while until they were ready to move on again. They weren't expecting anything more.This time around, they stayed because they found out it was a place they might have a chance at a future.





	1. the Hail Mary clicks in place

She wasn’t doing this on impulse. Joyce knew at least that much about what she was getting into. She didn’t know much about the situation she was inviting into her life, but she was doing it on purpose. 

Buying a futon from a grad student’s moving-out sale and not even haggling over the price, _that_ was impulse. The rest of it – thinking it through, grilling Buffy about them, hashing her worries out with Eunice over coffee in the gallery’s kitchenette, getting Eunice’s nephew Samuel to take a break from studying for the California bar to look over the custody agreement wording and reassure her it’d be fine, sitting Dawn down to tell her about the possibility of what could only by the most charitable definition be considered houseguests – those were small steps done deliberately. 

When the only impulsive part was the futon, she was doing fairly well.

If either of her daughters had put up some protest – after all her years of motherhood, Joyce knew the difference between pushback and genuine protest – she might have backed down. She’d have seen what she could do to help them that didn’t involve inviting them into her home. But Buffy had been the one who’d explained how much they needed help, and Dawn had been the one who’d listened to her older sister and her mother and said if they had things to share they should.

As long as her daughters weren’t afraid of them.

It was their adolescent-fueled sense of pure justice and same such lack of fear that saw Joyce driving almost to the end of Sunnydale, out to the old factory. She parked three blocks away, hoping that the two of them were in. If they weren’t, she could see about spinning a lie that they’d moved on. They could have by now; she hadn’t seen either of them anywhere in town in almost a week. Not that she’d been looking, but that wasn’t the point. They were homeless, the woman was clearly deranged and the young man was something else completely, both of them stinking, neither of them really _present_ in the world in a way that made them seem like solid choices for potential basement occupants. Both their accents shivered with questions Joyce itched to know the answers to, like how they’d managed to get here – here to America, California, Sunnydale, the factory. What had pulled them to leave where they’d come from, and why this specific place out of everywhere in the world they could have gone. Joyce knew she could ask everything later, when the timing was better. If they said yes to what she had to ask them today.

Joyce stood at the side door, held her hand up, and almost knocked before she just pushed her way inside.

Cool but not cold, and dim but not dark. Sunnydale’s old cannery was earmarked for demolition at some point in the future. It would probably be replaced by a new set of subdivisions or single-family houses, with greenbelts for biking and dog-walking and maybe a new primary school, depending on who’d be sitting on the zoning commission. But at the moment, it stood as a testament to shifts in industrial economy nobody could have guessed at decades ago. Sunnydale had adapted, reinventing itself as a UC town and doing a good job of it, but the factory still stood, patiently waiting for its own demise.

In the meantime, it gave birds a place to nest, teenagers a place to practice their graffiti, and people who didn’t have anywhere else to sleep a roof over their heads. At least until kindly single-parent gallery owners took it upon themselves to open their hearts and homes to them.

She’d heard the vague, half-believable rumors about its current uses – children’s stories, all of them. A few came from Dawn and Buffy; a few more arrived secondhand from other parents. Going from the bottles and cans lying in the far corners, some of them were even true. She didn’t know how much the current residents had contributed to everything, how much of the garbage was evidence of their own habits and behaviors. Buffy had vouched for them, and Joyce still wanted to believe her, but she couldn’t be completely certain about their trustworthiness just yet, especially not with the sharp light from the broken glass. Broken glass, crumpled cans, God knew what else.

But even if they were all theirs, she knew even just extending the olive branch was the least she could do. Even if all the broken glass and – she took a quiet step closer, got a better look, and felt flush even in the cool air. Broken glass and crumpled cans that had lain undisturbed long enough for dust to settle around them. A very long enough, for some of it, judging by the logos on the sides of the bottles and the pull-tab openings on the cans.

She laughed quietly at herself, careful not to disturb all the high quiet around her.

“Hello,” she called out, walking further inside. “It’s Joyce,” she pitched her voice loud enough to carry through to the roof and echo back at her. They could be sleeping or they might be out. It wasn’t as though she could check if their car was in the driveway. “Joyce Summers. Buffy’s mother.”

If they were here, they’d have heard her, and if they weren’t, she’d bought that futon for nothing.

She looked up, and around, and for a moment couldn’t believe the quality of shadows the high windows gave the ceiling. If they _had_ moved on she’d see about renting the place from the city before its inevitable bulldozing. Maybe some large-scale ceramic installations, she could pitch something about urban renewal and – 

“We’re coming, we’re coming,” the young man – Spike, which couldn’t be his legal name but was the only one he’d given her – called out from deeper inside. “Give us a minute, Dru’s just getting her boots on.”

“Oh. Sure thing,” Joyce called back, almost embarrassed, but she moved ahead, following the sound of his voice. It was coming from the old supervisor’s office, the door’s frosted glass window somehow still intact. She couldn’t see inside, but could hear them moving, and when things quieted down enough to let her know they were ready to see her, she took a couple of big steps back and turned away to make it seem like she hadn’t been looking until the door opened.

Spike closed the door behind them, stuffing his hands in his duster’s pockets and focusing his gaze on her from across the room, staring almost hard enough to look right through her. Right now, she couldn’t blame him for not wanting to trust her. Drusilla – fifty-fifty chance on that one – stood next to him, hands behind her back as she held her gaze steady and waited patiently for whatever Joyce had to say.

“It’s good to see you,” Joyce said, to try to break the ice. Both of them were dressed in clothes that had seen better days, black jeans and plain black t-shirt for him, blue jeans and a faded green t-shirt that might have been witty or might have been a band for her, the words themselves too far gone for Joyce to tell. Buffy said she’d seen them dumpster-diving on campus; Joyce was willing to believe that.

“Is this about the invitation?” Drusilla asked quietly, skipping over the icebreaker completely. It took Joyce a moment to get her conversational footing back.

“Yes, as it turns out – yes, if you still want to come, then it’s open to you. I don’t know if you have other plans. I wouldn’t want to impose if you do, but if you don’t, then, well, you’re welcome to come and stay for a while.”

“Really?” Drusilla asked.

“Yes,” Joyce said again.

Neither of them tried to hold in their emotions, Drusilla’s hands coming up to her face and Spike with the sort of unfiltered surprise she hadn’t seen much of since Dawn had turned six.

“Thank you, Mrs. Summers, _thank you_ ,” he said. “This means more than we can say, but thank you, thank you so much. We’ll be out of here straightaway, ready in no time.”

“It’s a good thing I brought the car,” Joyce said.

Drusilla looked at Spike. “She’ll be taking us on a drive.”

“Just – just to the house,” Joyce clarified. “Wait, you thought you’d walk it? It’s almost four miles.”

Spike shrugged. “Nice sunny day, four miles isn’t much. You haven’t even got any hills. Might take us a couple hours, but we’ve only got one place to be today.”

“And you wouldn’t be afraid of getting lost?”

“No.”

“Right.” Joyce nodded. “I’m parked a couple of blocks away, and I can bring it around. Take twenty minutes, if you need to.”

“Give us fifteen – no, give us ten minutes and we’ll be ready to go, ten minutes do it, pet?” he asked Drusilla.

“Thereabouts and yes,” she whispered between her fingers.

“Ten minutes for us to pack,” he said to Joyce. “Just give us that, we’ll be ready to go.”

They disappeared back into the office and Joyce left to drive up to the factory like she’d promised, preemptively rolling down the windows. It didn’t feel like it’d been ten minutes when they came out, each of them with their own backpack and worn duffel bag, bringing them into the backseat instead of putting them inside the trunk.

“Seatbelts,” she said reflexively when she checked the rearview mirror and saw they weren’t buckled in, then held herself back from saying anything else when Drusilla murmured an apology and both of them buckled in.

It wasn’t a long drive; midmorning traffic was light enough that it barely took twenty minutes. Better than what would have been hours walking in the sun. Joyce left a window barely cracked open for some circulation as she led them around the back, through the kitchen and down into the basement. Getting it ready for them had taken more effort than just getting the futon. There’d been a trip to the SPCA thrift shop across town followed by one to the sister consignment-thrift stores at the east Sunnydale shopping center the same day. She’d breezed through Long’s Drugs with a basket before trading that in for a cart when she realized just how much she had to buy because it was one thing to get towels and sheets gently used and another when came to more personal items. Some things had to come new, like three-packs of plain underwear, and adding two people to the household, even provisionally, meant some things had to start coming in bigger amounts. Like laundry detergent.

Joyce had already set aside the space they’d have to themselves and set up most of what she’d bought for them. The futon, a cheap standing lamp, table and chairs that had been sitting in the basement before Spike and Drusilla had ever come to Sunnydale. A chest of drawers she’d bought back in grad school that hadn’t fit in her new bedroom whose contents had been boxed up and shoved into the back of her closet. All that, and there was still a fair amount of shelf space for them to put what they’d brought with them, which wasn’t much more than the clothes on their backs.

“My and Dawn and Buffy’s bedrooms are on the second floor, plus the main bathroom. There’s a sink and toilet down here, but if you want a shower then you’ll have to get used to taking turns. So, Spike, if you’d –”

“Dru goes first,” Spike said as he finished taking in the basement, the water-stained gray walls and small high windows, the shelves of cleaning supplies and the boxed-up clutter under the stairs, and started inspecting the furniture.

“Sorry?”

“You’ve been kind not to mention anything, but we know we’re rank. It doesn’t matter how much I need a shower because Dru always goes first, no matter what.” He didn’t look up from the chest of drawers, pulling out each one to check the nothing he found there. “I’ll get us unpacked, and she’ll get clean.”

“All right.” She didn’t smell as bad as he did, but it wasn’t worth pressing that issue right now. 

Instead, Joyce took Drusilla upstairs while he began unpacking, leaving the basement door open behind them.

“If you need extra towels, they’re here in the closet, and we can get into laundry later. Right now getting you two settled in is…is something wrong?” Drusilla shook her head, fixing Joyce with a clear, focused expression.

“It’s easier for Spike to be the one who’s dirty,” she said. “It’s not good for either of us, like this, but if there’s only time for one bath, we both know if he gets filthy he can hold to himself better than I can if I do. Nothing more than that. If there’s only time for one person to get clean, better me than him, because he’s the one of us who can wait longer.”

“Oh.”

“That’s why I’m having mine first. Because I always take one first.”

“Right.”

“He didn’t mean anything nasty to you by what he said.”

“No, it’s all right. But – when would there be time for just one of you to shower?”

“Plenty sorts of reasons. There might not be enough water in the tank for everyone to have a turn. We might’ve been on our way to leaving, or got caught where we shouldn’t be. Once we got invited into a party, lovely party, and it was someone’s house, so he stood watch while I washed.” She grinned. “Learned our lesson that night. Next time we tried that, we stayed the night through, slept on the couch and both got clean the next morning before we left. Doing that’s a different kind of risk, so be careful if you try it.”

“I’ll definitely keep that in mind. Anyway, the towels are right here.”

“Always need to know where those are, should you want to go traveling through the galaxy.”

When it was Spike’s turn, he left the duster downstairs and held a set of fresh clothes close against his chest, looking around the bathroom before going inside, and Joyce was two steps down the hall when she heard him ask, “Mrs. Summers, if I could…?”

“Yes, Spike?”

“It’s fine that I use the soap that’s out already, right? I didn’t have to bring some from downstairs.”

“It’s fine for you to use what’s out there.”

“Right. Thanks.” Joyce knew the meaning behind that quiver in his tone and didn’t wait long for the follow-up. “How do the taps work?”

She blinked, then very deliberately put on a smile. “Why don’t I show you.”

He kept the fresh clothes hugged to his chest as she showed him how to pull up the stopper to divert the water from bath to shower, which way to turn for hot and which for cold, and for good measure, how to adjust the water pressure on the showerhead. It took him a long time to finish, but every second was worth it if it meant she didn’t have to breathe carefully while standing next to him.

Which he then undid about half the good of by going out onto the back porch to smoke a cigarette, but she was happy to take at least that much.

-

Buffy hadn’t exactly suggested it to Mom. She’d put down hints and possibilities, mostly in the angle of doing something for them directly like money or food, and Mom had definitely picked up something. The idea of basement residency hadn’t been something Buffy had come out and said in so many words. All she’d done was make sure to point out how rare it was for a house in this part of California to have a basement the second time her new weird friends came up in conversation. She’d even waited a few minutes to mention the basement in a completely different context. She’d been careful to not say that the space should be used for them. Just that it was there.

It’d been hard to keep calm when she’d heard Mom’s plans for how to put that space to good use if her friends were willing, but she’d managed. When she locked her bedroom door behind her and thought about what was coming, she didn’t even cry. 

The new cigarette reek and ashtray with finished butts on the back porch when she got home from school – since when did Mom even _own_ an ashtray? – told her they’d been plenty willing. She almost expected they’d already gone back out to do whatever they did to fill up their days, and she’d have to wait for whenever they happened to get back to say hi to them. But Spike barely glanced at Buffy when she came down the stairs. Tilting his head to acknowledge her. Saying, “Hello, Buffy.” Going right back to what he was doing, which was making a fairly epic mess of things across the table. Drusilla was sitting on the bed, cradling a doll, and at least she kept looking right at Buffy even if she didn’t say anything or go so far as to actually make an expression.

“Hey there, yourself,” Buffy said, sitting herself down at the table. The washing machine’s rumbles and the dryer’s hums kept the basement from achieving complete silence. “So you made it here okay.”

“Your Mum gave us a ride from the factory. More than nice of her to even think of that. We’d been ready to walk it, but no, she gave us a ride right across town besides everything else she’s gifted us.” As he spoke, he pulled a green drawstring bag out of a backpack. He shook it a couple of times, getting in some good clink-clack sounds, before scattering everything in it across the table. “We can’t thank you enough for offering us all this.” Dru nodded, humming in agreement.

“What’s it you’re up to now?” Buffy asked.

“Inventory,” he said. “We do it every time we settle into someplace new. Take account of everything we’ve got so we know what’s still around and what we need.” The bag was full of jewelry – big heavy rings, thick chains, pendants and funky bracelets, mostly silver, some gems or glass. It was hard to tell in this light. But it was still a pretty impressive collection, especially as Spike spread it all out, sorting it by type and color, piece by piece, as he went.

“Is all this Dru’s?”

“No, it’s mine.” He didn’t look up, his focus on inspecting every item one at a time, not in any hurry, until they were all portioned out to his satisfaction. Then back inside they went, all scooped up, the bag set at the far edge of the table and another, smaller purple-and-gold drawstring one, that clinked in just the same way came out. 

_“That_ one’s mine,” Dru said, and even smiled. She got up to collect it, tossed it in the air a couple of times to make it jangle, and spread the contents on the bedspread Buffy recognized from the guest room back home – back in Los Angeles, it’d been long enough and Dad didn’t even live there anymore – without putting down her doll.

Spike took out two books he leafed through and set at the corner of the table, squaring them off with each other. Two big, solid, hardback books that didn’t look like they had any business being lugged around in a backpack but belonged in a fancy library somewhere. Dru’s doll, that Buffy could understand. But she knew from her ongoing stint as a school library assistant – it’d been that or study hall, she’d figured working in the library at least meant _doing_ something, and it’d turned out she liked it enough to stick with it – how fast books got heavy, no matter how much you liked them. If Spike was carrying these around with him, he had to know that too. And still think it was worth it to keep lugging these around with him for however long he’d been doing that.

He pulled out a little notebook, then what looked like a pack of playing cards, and they both went on top of the books. He unrolled a grocery store bag to reveal a couple of toothbrushes which he rolled back away immediately and threw into the trash bin across the room. Then he unzipped and emptied a makeup bag with everything a girl on the streets might need plus a little for the guy besides, eyeliner and lipstick and blush, mascara and foundation and nail polish.

“May I?” Buffy asked, her hand hovering over the table’s new lipstick section. Spike shrugged, which she took as permission to pick up and check that what she was holding was, in fact, from makeup counters and not local West Coast chains’ bargain bins. There wasn’t a lot of color variation, but it was a good set of brands and everything was at least mid-level quality. Stuff you invested a month’s worth of allowances into. Not that they had allowances or much in the way of income. Definitely not the type of reliable income that’d allow for the purchasing of items like this.

Buffy looked at the lipstick again, and very deliberately set it down with its sisters. Pushed back away from the table, got her backpack off the floor. “Well, you’re all fine down here, which is good, so I guess I’ll just be heading up to my room since this math won’t do itself.”

“Enjoy,” Dru called out to her as she climbed up the stairs.

-

When Mom explained what would happen in the basement, Dawn went through the moves of nodding and listening. She didn’t ask any real questions about why it was happening, just if she should get a lock on her door. For personal safety. But they weren’t like that, not according to Buffy, who’d met them in the _totally_ safe place of The Bronze which was apparently as close as Sunnydale got to Los Angeles, even though Dawn had been by in daytime and it completely wasn’t anything like that. The Bronze was a place where her older sister went dancing with her friends and could probably get college guys to buy her drinks and also meet people that needed a place to sleep that wasn’t an abandoned canning factory.

“I’m not sharing any towels with them,” Dawn said.

“We’ll get them new ones,” Mom told her.

Before they’d moved in she’d been able to pretend Mom had turned the basement into a guest room. It was coming home from school and seeing them down there, saying hello with the washing machine humming along and them putting their clothes away on the shelves and in the drawers, that it hit her there were authentically crazy people living in her house.

But they’d been cool. Spike had that awesome coat and weird scar, and Drusilla had the neatest stompy boots. They both wore nail polish. They were from England, which was where all the best music came from. And they’d talked to her just like they’d talked to Mom. Like she was someone they were supposed to take seriously. Maybe because they thought that’s what guests did or maybe they were just that cool to everyone. Either way, she’d liked it.

And now Drusilla was cooking everyone omelets for breakfast, just because.

“What do you want in yours?” She asked Dawn. It was only breakfast but she was already in full makeup, lipstick and everything, way too fancy for just cooking breakfast in jeans and an old t-shirt but also really, really pretty. Grown-up pretty. Her hair was all dark in a sharp braid down her back. “We’ve got cheese, onion, and cheese and onion. Also plain, if you’d like.”

“Onion, please.”

“I’ll take double cheese,” Buffy said.

“Most certainly.” Drusilla had already laid out everything she needed right around her, just like a fancy chef, so she didn’t have to turn around to grab the parsley or the salt. She’d even cut the onions first, which went into the pan before she cracked any eggs. 

“This is so great,” Dawn said, leaning forward over the kitchen island on her elbows.

“What is?” Buffy asked.

“That Drusilla knows how to cook omelets. Remember when Mom tried? And she said they were just scrambles?”

“They were good scrambles.”

“I’m not saying they weren’t. I’m just saying if Drusilla knows any tricks, she’d better share them.”

“There’s no tricks to this,” she said, pushing the onions around and making the kitchen smell amazing. “It’s just agreeableness.”

“What?” Dawn asked.

“I’ve nothing else to say on the matter. It’s knowing – no, _shush_ – knowing like I’ve said, that it’s not for questioning, there’s no other sort of circumstance. No.” She shook her head. “Let it come along as it happens.”

“Is something the matter?”

“Dawnie –” Buffy started, and that was just the wrong thing to say, because this wasn’t a good time to pull out a nickname.

“Drusilla?” Dawn asked again, ignoring Buffy completely.

“I thought I said quiet,” Drusilla hissed, staring around the kitchen. “I’d rather we not be unkind right now.”

Buffy put her hand on Dawn’s shoulder and tugged gently. Dawn was about to follow her sister’s suggestion when Dru broke. That was the only word Dawn could think of, that she broke.

“Not in _time_ ,” she shouted the last word. “This isn’t, isn’t, isn’t, not _time yet_ , not with anyone in here now, not anyone here, not yet not here, _not here not here_.” She was breathing hard through her nose, glaring at the air, and then shouted out a big barking noise. Her hands flew up to cover her ears and the wooden spoon hit the floor with a _thwock_ and she started nodding her head up and down with her hands, shaking all over. Dawn leaned away and looked at Buffy, who looked just as freaked out as Dawn felt. “Not,” Drusilla said. “Not, not, not, not, _not_.”

Then she went quiet. She stayed standing there, shivering all over, breathing hard, the onions cooking away on the stove as she shivered and swayed. Then she turned her head with her hands to look at Dawn. She put her hands down and kept staring.

Then she grabbed the spoon, dropped it in the sink, and started rummaging around in the drawer for a fresh utensil.

“Blast it, I’ve gone and burned them.” She sighed at the onions in the pan and twirled a metal spatula around. “Can’t leave them alone, always keep an eye on them.”

“No! No, it’s fine,” Buffy cut in. “Dawn likes her onions crisp. Dawn. You like them crisp. Right.”

“Yeah. I totally do.”

“Really?” Drusilla asked.

“She likes anchovies on her pizza. Trust me, she’ll like these.”

The worst part was Dawn did like her onions crisped up like that. Drusilla served her a restaurant-perfect omelet, but she almost didn’t want to eat it. Wasn’t there a Miss Manners rule against eating food made by a crazy person? She looked at Buffy again, who nodded at her breakfast. Dawn shook her head, and Buffy nodded at the omelet again, harder.

Dawn pushed it away. 

And she knew _exactly_ what Buffy was playing at when she reached out for it, and she played right into Buffy’s hands but no way was she letting her older sister have her breakfast when Buffy didn’t even _like_ onions and it was stupid how good it tasted and she felt bad when she realized she’d hoped it tasted bad so she wouldn’t feel bad about not wanting to finish it. But it was really good. It was stupid how good it tasted.

Drusilla was in the middle of cooking Buffy’s omelet when Dawn heard Spike came up the stairs. “Dru, I thought I heard –” Then he stopped without even letting go of the doorknob.

“Good morning, Spike,” Buffy said, but he didn’t look like he’d heard her. He just looked around, at Drusilla, at her, at Buffy and at everything spread out around the kitchen. Dawn noticed he also had some makeup on – not a lot, just some eyeshadow.

Then he laughed. Like there was something funny about what was going on. “Oh, look at this. Look at _this_. Dru, you’re cooking breakfast for the sisters again.”

And somehow that made Drusilla smile and straighten up like she’d won something big. “I rather am, aren’t I.”

“You’d best be proud of yourself.”

“I might well be soon enough.” She turned back to the stove, and Spike crossed his arms over his chest.

“But it got loud, didn’t it?”

“Not now, please.”

“I’m only –”

“Not for long. There?” She said, angry like Dad used to get sometimes. Like this wasn’t something to talk about.

“Here,” he said, except not like Mom would when Dad got like that. But the conversation was over. Spike still walked over to Drusilla and put his hand on her back, in between her shoulder blades, and left it there for a moment before he went to get himself some coffee. Neither of them said anything, even though Drusilla tilted her head back and closed her eyes when Spike touched her.

“Is everything okay?” Dawn asked, in case it wasn’t.

“Yeah. It just got loud for Dru for a moment there. But it’s fine now, right, love?” Drusilla nodded, sliding Buffy’s omelet onto a plate. “It just gets loud for Dru sometimes.”

“She hears voices?”

“Dawn!” Buffy hissed through a mouthful of double-cheesy eggs.

“Sometimes,” Drusilla said, ignoring that Dawn hadn’t been talking to her. “Usually only that. It depends. They come around more when it’s cold.”

“What else?” If Drusilla hadn’t answered Dawn wouldn’t have asked another question, but she had. Dawn pushed her plate over and leaned forward on the counter. “Do you get visions and stuff?”

“As it happens to turn out, in fact, sometimes I even…oh, oh _goodness_ ,” Drusilla gasped, staring at Dawn. “Oh, I can’t hardly…you, oh, come here.”

“Huh?”

Drusilla waggled her hand in the air, then pointed her first two fingers at her eyes. “Look at me. Dearest darling. Dearest Dawn, look at me. Let me inside, let me belong to you, to me.” She began moving her fingers closer to Dawn’s face, who leaned back but couldn’t look away. “Breaking into you, break into me. Into Dawn, gently. Here now, come here, come, come....” Then she pressed her index finger right onto Dawn’s nose. “Boop.”

“Boop?”

“Boop,” she repeated, grinning. “I’m sick in the head, not psychic.”

“Certified,” Spike said, over a mug of coffee.

“I kinda figured that,” Buffy muttered.

“No, she is,” he said. “Certified, I mean. Not just certifiable. Which we both are. But Dru’s honestly certified.”

“Really?” Dawn asked.

“It’s true. She went and got herself written up all official by someone with a proper title and the right letters at the end of her name. No fooling around there.”

“What about you, then?” Buffy asked. “You got anything I can look up in DMV-SM?”

“Me? You think I’m certified for anything? Oh, no.” He shrugged. “I’m just insane.”


	2. lock the front door open

Drusilla and Spike didn’t need any prompting to clean up the kitchen and load the dishwasher, which Buffy found more than reasonable. They made the mess, and they took on the job of cleaning it up. That was how the world was supposed to work and how her mom enforced household cleanliness. Drusilla and Spike clearing up her and Dawn’s plates was nice of them, and that was all the thought Buffy gave to it.

But then Buffy got home from school to fresh laundry three days ahead of schedule, everything folded up neatly in a basket right outside her door. Somehow the two of them handling her underthings and delicates was fine, but actually going inside her room was a bridge too far to cross. At least that kind of almost made sense, since they hadn’t asked her if that was okay or not. It was the same for Dawn and Mom: no more washing things yourself, just re-sheeting the bed and putting everything away.

The day after that, the two of them scrubbed down the shower, the sinks, the toilets, the kitchen countertops and every available hard surface. They pulled a bucket and squeegee out of somewhere in the basement and went to work on the windows. Then they vacuumed as much of the floors as they could reach, even behind the fridge, and finished the day by cleaning out the rain gutters. Laundry again after that, and this was all in addition to the cooking, the dishwashing, ongoing housekeeping, and general tidying-up of everywhere in the house but the bedrooms. And somehow it still wasn’t enough for them to eat their meals upstairs with everyone else. Breakfast, fine, Buffy could get that, with the two of them up early and her and Dawn having places to be and Mom’s schedule sometimes having her open the gallery at seven-thirty and sometimes at ten. Lunch, maybe, since they were usually alone in the house. But they never ate dinner upstairs, even when everyone was around for them to. Buffy had seen them take their meals down to the basement a few times, forks and knives held carefully underneath the plates, and those same pieces of flatware and utensils finding their way into the dishwasher later.

She’d asked Spike about it all once; she’d gotten a laugh for her effort. “We’re English,” he’d said. “Domestic servitude’s about the one piece of honest heritage we can lay claim to.”

The worst part of the whole new set-up was having so much _wanting_ to talk about stuff, and there being almost nobody available for comment. It’d been hard enough to adjust to Sunnydale High halfway through tenth grade. When pretty much everyone in town knew who they were and who their friends were and had stayed secure in that knowledge since third grade at the very latest, the whole fresh start thing was hobbled from the very beginning. Buffy had worked hard to get the friends she had now. Everyone knowing she had two crazy people in the basement wouldn’t help her shaky social standing any. Being a cheerleader only went so far.

“I think they’re trying to fight off the guilt,” she said to Willow and Xander over a white chocolate mocha. Some people knowing, that was fine. Having just Dawn available for comment had about killed her. “It’s not like Mom can charge them rent or anything. Asking them for thirty cents a day or whatever they could actually afford would just be insulting.”

“I’d think a good panhandler could get at least fifty cents a day here. We’re in a college town, remember,” Xander said.

“Then that’s just asking for the whole day’s wages. How’d they be able to save anything for themselves?” Willow asked.

“Yeah, fair point. Maybe just a cut of the take?”

“Look, I’m not complaining. I’m just trying to figure out – it’s not like they’re guests, but they’re not anything else, either. I don’t know what would make them feel okay with eating with everyone else.”

“Maybe just an invitation,” Willow said. “Something formal. I could probably get Mom to invite them over some Friday. And, you know, Sukkot’s coming up, that’s a big outside thing, everyone’s included, even the basement-dwellers.”

“Yeah, nothing like a good harvest-time holiday to bring the community together,” said Xander.

“I don’t know. I don’t mean I wouldn’t love to come. I’m pretty sure Mom would love it. But I don’t know if they’d want to. I don’t even know if they’re Jewish.”

“That shouldn’t matter. It’s a sukkah _party_ , not a sukkah major-prayer-event. Just a party that happens to be in an outdoor structure with some specific cultural meaning that they don’t need to care about to enjoy the punch.”

“I can personally vouch for it being a casual affair,” Xander said. “Hey, is your mom going to make that olive paste this year?”

“I think so.”

“Thanks, Wil, but – I don’t know if they’d be comfortable with it.” Buffy crunched some more ice with her straw. “I don’t just mean them being Jewish or not. I mean, even asking them seems like a lot. Maybe I’ll start out with breakfast and then work them up to outdoor gatherings.”

“Oh. Well, that’s okay. You know you’re invited, you and your family?”

“I do now. Thanks.”

It probably would be fun. Low-key fun, with bubbly drinks in short plastic cups and tiny carrots for dipping into homemade olive paste. Maybe even cute little sandwiches you ate while sticking out your pinkie. It could probably even be called wholesome. She’d have to go find out, and she kind of wanted to. It’d probably be okay. Low-key fun tended to be the kind where you stood around and made chit-chat about comp-sci teachers, and you could always excuse yourself for more seltzer if things got sticky.

It was a party for people that already knew each other pretty well, with little patience for having to make adjustments for just a couple of new people. Or at least, a party for people that knew _about_ each other pretty well. Lots and lots of people who didn’t know Spike and Drusilla, like _know_ them know them, coming at them with all sorts of expectations of social normality and perfect knowledge of what constituted a good party performance. Ready to shun them and theirs at a moment’s notice.

No way was she even _telling_ Spike and Dru about the invitation.

When she got home, Spike was out on the back porch steps, enjoying a cigarette and the afternoon sunshine. How he wasn’t boiling inside his duster, she didn’t know and didn’t want to test out. Or maybe he was and just didn’t care.

“Afternoon,” he said.

“Hey there. Is Dawn around?”

“Yeah, she’s got Dru reading her fortune downstairs.”

“Right. Thanks.”

She almost didn’t want to know but headed there anyway.

“Let me know when it suits you,” Drusilla said, shuffling the deck and waiting for Dawn to give the word. “Oh, hello there. Having a good day?”

“So far, yeah. What’s all this?”

“I think it’s good now,” Dawn said.

“Tarot reading. Yes,” said Drusilla, setting the deck down on the table.

“Spike said you were doing fortune-telling.”

“It’s not _exactly_ fortune-telling,” Dawn said. “Tarot reading _can_ be but it’s not always. Right?”

“I like to think of it as more present-reading. The fortune forecasting isn’t always something I ask for, but it usually comes alongside. Like knowing rain’s on its way from the touch of the air. All right, let’s see what the world has for you.” 

Curious in spite of – and because of – a history test she had to study for, Buffy pulled up a chair and sat down to watch while Drusilla explained the cards as they came down. What the suits and numbers meant, why it mattered that this one was upside-down and this one was laid sideways. It wasn’t generic ‘you get upset when people are rude to you’ life advice, either. Drusilla gave Dawn a serious lecture about the need for self-control over her impulses and not giving into them, avoiding the temptation of easy luck to favor hard work, and how it was very possible that there would be the need to commit to someone over her. Not sexually, but definitely someone in authority.

“What this one means,” Drusilla tapped the Three of Cups, “there may well be something festive coming soon. Not something you’ve necessarily got coming right to you, but coming around, just the same – you just happen to be here for it as it’s coming.” Buffy stiffened up in her chair. “But that it’s reversed, that’s its way of saying not to fall into that celebrating and see nothing else. There might be reason to enjoy it, but it’s more important you keep your head down here on Earth, and not think the joyfulness will stay. Things may well go wrong, if you leave everything but the celebration behind.”

“Right,” Dawn said. “Stay in school, don’t fall into booze and rock-and-roll. Got it.”

“Could you do this for me sometime?” Buffy asked, tilting her head to try to read the card right-side up.

“Some other day, certainly. But Spike said we’d go and look for nestings later, and he gets so restless cooped up all day.” She began gathering up the cards. “Tomorrow, if you like.”

“Maybe. Thanks for the offer.”

“You’re welcome.”

Dawn waited until they were in the kitchen with the door closed to start gushing. “That was really cool. You can’t deny that was cool. I know she’s crazy, but that was great.”

“I’m not denying it. I’m just – Willow invited us to a party at her house later this month. Us, the whole Summers family.”

“Really?”

“I’ll ask Mom. It’s in a couple of weeks and it’s probably fine for us all to go, but it’s what Drusilla said about it being a present-reading. I’m not saying the cards somehow came out in that Police album way because the universe likes to keep everything in tune with itself. I’m just…” She shrugged. “Anyway. We can ask Mom later.”

“Party at Willow’s house. Really got to stay down-to-Earth at one of those.”

“I heard there’s going to be olive dip. Homemade.”

“Oooh, fancy-fancy.” Dawn shook her fingers by her face. “But that just makes that reading even cooler.”

“Sure, but I mean –”

A knock came from the basement side of the door, and Buffy and Dawn moved out of the way for Drusilla to come out. Something else they didn’t need to do that they still kept on doing. Buffy was pretty sure they did that even when there wasn’t anyone else in the house. “Excuse me, please.”

“Enjoy the walk,” she said as Drusilla left to get Spike and wander out to wherever they were going. She tossed a wave behind her.


	3. freezer burn, all else is only icing

The week they’d moved to Sunnydale, Dawn biked from one side of town to the other to get a sense of how many Sunnydales would fit inside one Los Angeles. If she counted the college campus, it’d take at least four. By now, she’d gotten used to how life worked in a small town – it was a college town, sure, but take that away and you’d just be left with a bunch of houses. Whenever she got back from visiting Dad, going from a real city to a town whose tallest building was a four-story parking garage, Sunnydale just felt _short_. Little. A really low horizon line compared to both Los Angeles and San Diego. Dad had moved from the little apartment he’d rented right after the divorce to a condo he’d bought that had rooms for her and Buffy to stay whenever they wanted, but it wasn’t their old house back in Los Angeles. That kind of made Sunnydale home, now.

“So why’d you two come here?”

Spike shrugged and didn’t look up from her fingernails. “Not so much coming as it was stopping. We’d been traveling a while, and figured it was getting time to settle someplace for a bit, maybe bathe regularly for a change. Somewhere sunny, down south, plenty of fresh fruit ripe for the taking, and when we looked up at where we’d found ourselves, it was here.” He lifted her hand up to blow gently on her fingers. “Sorry if you’d expected more from us, but that’s all it was. No big story. Just a stop for a while. Now, hold them like this. If you get an itch, Dru’ll scratch it for you.”

“Can you get my left cheek?” She asked as Spike took her right hand.

“That I can. Here?” Dru pressed a finger against her face.

“A little bit higher.”

“This do?”

“That’s it. Thanks.”

“We might stay on through next year,” Dru said. Dawn shook away from the scratching. “There’s always good salvaging around a college when a semester ends. You’d not believe the things people are silly enough to throw away.”

“No, I’d believe it. I saw a whole living room out on the curb in LA once. Even the rug was out there.”

“You’re paying attention,” Dru said. Dawn looked at her, and she was smiling. “Might you let us know if you come across any other such misplaced rooms?”

“Sure. But in Sunnydale it’ll probably just be a garage sale.”

“Love a good moving sale. Great place to get new polish,” Spike said as he finished her pinkie and moved to her ring finger. “Whether or not you feel like paying. What? They’re getting rid of it anyway.” 

“Yeah, but it’s still –”

“You’d rather we’d just nick it from a department store?”

“I guess. I mean, it’s better for a big place to take that instead of just one person. Even if they’re going to throw it out anyway. They could give it away.”

“So it’s not the not-paying so much as who the money isn’t going to, then.”

“Kind of. I guess.”

Dru clicked her tongue. “Now that’s not such a bad –”

“Dawn?” Mom called before she knocked on the door like she was supposed to. “Dawn, Willow wants to know – are Spike and Drusilla down there?”

“Yeah, we’re here,” Spike called. “Who’s Willow?” he whispered to Dawn.

“Buffy’s friend. She’s the redhead.”

“Did I ever meet her?”

“She’s on the phone!” Mom called out again. “She’s asking for them.”

“Maybe?” Dawn said. “She came over a couple of weeks ago.”

“Huh.” He nodded. “We’ll see this up later. Yes, Mrs. Summers,” he called, “we’re on our way.”

“Oh, good, I don’t have to shout – yes, they’re here – oh? Sure, Spike, Willow wants to talk to you.”

“Hello? Oh, hello! Yes, of course I do.” He nodded, taking in what Dawn knew was an avalanche of words for Willow to get to the point. “And this would be for the both of us?” He hummed quietly. “Can I ask why?” He shrugged and switched ears. “I suppose that’s all right, then. I’m happy to say yes to your gracious invitation, very kind of you, but I’m not going to speak on Dru’s behalf, so here she is for you to ask her.”

Dru also said yes to what Willow was offering. Dawn did, too, when she found out it was the chance to attend the Rosenberg backyard sukkah party on Saturday afternoon. Mostly there’d be Buffy’s friends there, but she’d still be able to show off her nails to everyone.

-

Doctor and Professor Rosenberg both insisted nobody needed to bring anything, but Joyce knew a good bottle of sparkling wine never went amiss at a party.

“Thank you,” Sheila took it from Drusilla with a nod of appreciation. “I’ll go put this to chill.”

“You’re very welcome,” she said, smiling warmly, hands clasped together politely. Both her and Spike had dressed up as nicely as they could: he’d been persuaded to leave his coat behind, and the forty dollars Joyce had lent them had been more than enough to cover another visit to the SPCA’s thrift store and a pair of good pants for each of them.

“Oh, here you are!” Willow almost bounded into the room. “And you’re all early, too. The big fun doesn’t usually start until about one-thirty.”

“It’s not like we had anything better to do today,” Buffy said.

“But I thought – aha. I see what you did there,” Willow smiled. “You guys want to come help me and Xander set up the tables outside?”

“Sure thing.”

“That goes for you two, if you want.” Willow nodded at Spike and Drusilla; Spike looked at Drusilla, who shrugged, which seemed to be enough for him.

“We’ll catch up later,” he said to Joyce, and then it was just her and the Rosenbergs left in the foyer. 

“I know this is a holiday party, so of course you put up a sukkah every year. I guess what I want to ask, do you have a party every year?” Joyce asked as they went out to meet the other guests. Sheila put the champagne in the cooler next to the sodas and seltzer.

“Oh, yes.” She straightened a tray of pita wedges and hummus. “Ira likes using it as outreach for his students, and I admit its usefulness in neighborhood socialization and cultural connections – I don’t think Willow’s friend Alex had even heard of the holiday before she invited him over.”

“Yes. Well. It’s quite lovely. You made all this yourself?”

“Most of it. Not the spanakopita.”

“Of course not.”

Other guests began trickling in, some early, some punctual, a few of them grad students like Sheila had promised, the rest regular Sunnydale residents happy to be introduced to Joyce. She felt the same way about them. No, she hadn’t been to the party last year; yes, she was adjusting to the new town well enough; it was lovely to meet everyone; she’d been proud of that one fabric arts show and was pleased they’d enjoyed it so much themselves; it really was a gorgeous day to stand around outside and eat little finger foods as people came and went as their whims took them. Spike came to join her, sipping some of the punch and clearly enjoying himself.

“Is that woman on drugs?” 

“Wait, who?” Joyce whipped her head around. “What woman are we talking about?” 

“The one with the dark hair.” Walt pointedly looked over at Drusilla standing at the edge of the lawn. “I was just asking her about how she was doing, how she knew Ira and Sheila, and she fell into this monologue about gay women and burying bones in flowerbeds, something like that, I couldn’t really place any of it. Is she a grad student? Two years ago, now _that_ was a party, one of Ira’s students went to San Francisco for a conference and came back with some _really_ good –”

“Oh, no,” Spike said, grinning. “Trust me, she’s not on anything.”

“Really?” Madeline asked. “Because she sounds like –”

“She would be if we could afford it!” He was still grinning, having told a joke exactly one person on Earth found funny.

“Do you really mean that?” Frank wanted to know. Spike looked at him, tilting his head slightly and grin dropping away.

“Wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t,” Spike answered with a slight edge in his voice.

Joyce excused herself before she could hear more. It was barely one o’clock; things might calm down with more guests, once Spike and Drusilla were just two people in a crowd.

When Mr. Giles the school librarian showed up on what he said was Willow’s invitation, Sheila and Ira both spoke about how proud they were of Willow knowingly avoiding restrictive arbitrary social boundaries. Joyce wondered, silently, how many people Willow knew to invite. The moment passed quickly enough once the conversation turned to work. Art history and dealership had a lot of practical overlap with anthropology and a fair amount with modern psychology, enough that there was plenty of room to discuss modern women painters in the Central Valley realist tradition without cutting too deep into any particular school of semiotics. By the time they’d circled back around to the concept of representation versus performance, several other sets of parents had joined them, so Joyce felt comfortable slipping away to get herself a second cup of homemade sangria and using the opportunity to check on her daughters.

They seemed to be doing fairly well, at least from what she could see across the yard. There weren’t any other children around Dawn’s age, more in Buffy and her friends’ age group, but she looked fine. She was sticking by her sister, nodding and laughing and looking like she was honestly enjoying herself. Buffy looked genuinely relaxed, enough that Joyce didn’t want to head over to confirm in case her presence disrupted the moment. She just watched it from a distance: something she’d kept hoping to see since that one day when the world broke. It was something she knew she’d never have seen again if they’d stayed in LA.

Dawn still wouldn’t talk about it. Joyce hadn’t even been the one to see it, and she was plagued by enough bad memories; pressing Dawn to go back to that afternoon wouldn’t do her or anybody else any good. It wasn’t going away – it was _never_ going away – but it didn’t always have to be present.

“Mrs. Summers,” Drusilla said, making Joyce blink. She hadn’t heard her coming. “Are you having a fine time? You look like you’ve gotten lost.”

“Oh! Yes, I am, thanks for asking.” She was looking sane enough, attention and focus on the world around her. Maybe it’d just been a momentary lapse. “I think I was, for a moment there. Just thinking about – some trying times, I guess, and how it’s nice to see them gone.”

“I know how that goes,” she said. “Not hardly a joke, when it’s finally come time to say such things.”

“That’s not a bad way to put it.”

“Thank you. Could you pass me another plate? Spike wanted to try the cucumbers without anything interrupting them.”

Spike and Drusilla were at least chronologically adults. They weren’t her direct responsibility, and it was only tangential how their behavior reflected on her character inasmuch as it reflected at all. But she’d been the one to bring them here so she let herself feel some happiness in seeing them enjoy themselves. Watching them learn that Sunnydale was a nice, safe place where they could get their feet back underneath them. Everyone deserved that chance.

It lasted maybe another forty minutes. She was talking to Ira about the divergence between post-post-modernism and neo-realism when Dawn started tugging at her elbow. Joyce tried to let her daughter know she’d get her full attention in just a moment, but Dawn was insistent.

“Is there something I should be worried about?”

“I think it’s something you need to check out. Please? I don’t know what – could you come now?” She dropped her voice. “It’s Dru and she’s…I don’t think...”

“Oh.” Joyce knew what that meant. “Okay, I’m sure it’s fine. Ira, lovely talking, but my daughter needs me, you know how it is.” He let her go to follow Dawn to the back end of the yard, next to the butterfly bushes, where Buffy and Willow and Xander and the rest of their friends were standing around, all of them listening to Drusilla spin some sort of fairy tale with Spike standing by, looking completely unconcerned about the words coming out of his girlfriend’s mouth. 

“It’s a very simple thing, really. I taught Spike how to do it, and everyone in our old family, back when we were traveling. What you have to do is slice it down so you can fit it into your mouth, just in little bits, since too much death at once makes you sick.” She took a sip of water. “If you’ve done that part right, then you eat as much of it as you can, so long as you don’t eat it all. Eat it all at once and you’re done for just like if you’d never eaten any. But if you eat almost all of it, all of it but one little bite, then you’re safe forever. That’s how you stay safe from dying. Eat all your death but one bite of it saved for later, and keep that last little piece saved for when you want to use it.”

“Uh-huh,” Xander’s friend Jesse said. Willow looked at Joyce with open desperation.

“Once you’ve got that last piece saved you’re safe from everything. You see? You’ve got your last bit of death carved up safe so it can’t be used up or spent whenever it might otherwise happen to you.” She was talking like she was looking for someone’s opinion on renovating a bathroom. “Everyone gets the same amount of death, but if you use it right and eat it up, you’ve got all the death you need saved for yourself. I made sure to do it before I went traveling, so whatever would happen to me, I’d be safe. I can’t die unless it’s when I want to use that last bit up. I don’t want to go for a long time yet, so if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, it won’t kill me because that’s not how I want to spend my last piece of death.”

Xander crossed his arms over his chest. “Tell me, what does death _taste_ like, then?” 

“Apricots,” Drusilla said matter-of-factly.

“Right, apricots. Silly me.”

“Oh, Joyce, hello,” Drusilla said to her. “I was just telling your daughters about when Spike and I lived in New York City.”

“You lived in New York?” Joyce asked in spite of herself, in spite of what she’d been pulled away to see.

“Close to two years, wasn’t it?” Spike said. “We didn’t see a third November.” 

“It wasn’t hardly September when we’d gone.”

“Hey, I didn’t know you lived in New York,” Dawn said.

“Didn’t I tell you? Thought I’d told you. I know I told Buffy,” he said.

“What were you doing in New York?” Willow’s friend Amy asked.

“This and that,” Drusilla shrugged. “Work as needed. We moved around quite a lot, to where we could afford each time.”

“I didn’t know that, either,” Joyce said, “And I’d really love to hear you give me more detail about that later, but if you’d lend me Spike for a minute I’d really appreciate it.”

“What?” He looked at Joyce, openly searching her face, and then he looked at Drusilla. She leaned close to him, whispered something in his ear, and Joyce saw the moment that comprehension bloomed across his face. “Oh, well, certainly.” He gave Drusilla a good-bye kiss on the cheek and followed Joyce back towards the main party. When they were out of earshot of the rest of the kids, he asked, “So what do you need me for?”

“Is there something one of us should be doing?”

“About what? You mean about Dru?”

“Yes. I knew she gets – episodes, and I know you said she might have some trouble being here, but that wasn’t just her taking a moment to deal with whatever came into her head. I just don’t know, should I have said something to Willow’s parents? Did Buffy or Dawn need to know something, all you said –”

“What I said was if she got bad, come get me or go get you. Which Dawn did, so good on her, except that wasn’t Dru going bad. If I’d known Dawn was going off to get you, I’d have told her she needn’t have bothered, but I didn’t. I’m sorry for not saying more precisely what Dru going bad’s really like. That wasn’t it.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“About what?” He’d begun doing that trick of looking at her out of the sides of his eyes, not quite meeting her full-on. Like he knew he had something to hide the moment the conversation got even a little intense.

“Drusilla. I knew she’s sick, but she’s – shouldn’t you have _done_ something?”

“What, about that raving madness? Her going absolutely off her rocker and saying those things about eating up bits of death?” Joyce nodded. “No.”

“No?”

“She’s not raging around, is she? She’s not attacking anyone for no good reason. She’s calm, she’s enjoying the party, she’d got a conversation going and she’s handling things pretty well right now, considering. I don’t see why you’re raising a fuss over her stepping outside the world for a little while. Give her time and she comes right back.”

“What she’s doing doesn’t seem worth –”

“Look, what’s the bloody _problem?”_ He changed in an instant, everything going hard, his full eye contact suddenly deeply uncomfortable the way he wasn’t looking anywhere but right at her. “What does it matter that she’s not doing so well with the world right this very moment? Why’ve you gone making a fuss over that? You _saw_ her come back, you were right there.”

“I suppose I would’ve liked a bit of warning that she goes out like that.”

“She does. There. And I’m sorry for being cross at you, but I really didn’t think she’d be any trouble for anyone.”

“Maybe I should have made my concerns more clear.” It came out sharper than she’d meant, and maybe that was what made Spike draw back.

“Right, then.” He’d sounded genuinely contrite a moment ago. “Maybe it’ll be for the best if Dru and I leave early, then.”

“You don’t have –”

“No reason to disrupt the fun for anyone else. Not for the hosts, not for you. We’ll walk back. Please do enjoy the rest of the party and if we don’t see her again thank Willow for the invitation.” Before Joyce could speak he’d walked away, just like that, striding across the yard. By the time she caught up with him, he was saying something to Drusilla.

“Not another ten minutes?” She looked at him gently.

“Not another _one.”_

“All right. Good-bye.” That good-bye was it before they left hand-in-hand, not even stopping for one last glass of seltzer or to say farewell to anyone else. Dawn looked hurt, Buffy looked upset, and the rest of the group was varying degrees of confused and frustrated and bewildered.

The thought that none of the adults in her own peer group had probably noticed anything strange was only comfort for a half-second. That’d only last until their kids talked, and good heavens above would they talk.

“You _could’ve_ just come over for Parcheesi,” Buffy said to Willow.


	4. you loved the suns of the pioneers and the Hollywood cowboy stars

That evening, Willow called to apologize, and Buffy related that both Spike and Drusilla said things were fine. From what Buffy could tell, that was true – she and Mom and Dawn left a couple hours later and had gotten home to find their basement tenants in the backyard, enjoying the sunshine and some tea. The two of them ate dinner downstairs like normal. The next morning, Buffy came down to see fresh-baked scones on the kitchen island, waiting to become someone’s breakfast. Spike and Drusilla weren’t around to offer them personally, but they were clearly trying to communicate they weren’t bitter or upset about the minor fiasco. Even if they weren’t saying so out loud. Their presence advertised, their contributions offered, without being so forward as to use their words when baked goods could do the job instead, like the cake that night, or the muffins the day after that.

It wasn’t until Wednesday morning that she realized she was bracing for fallout that just wasn’t coming. She was old hat at leaning into rumors, listening in on locker room and hallway gossip, checking for eye contact that broke the moment she joined in – but if it hadn’t landed by now, it wasn’t coming at all. Maybe she should’ve expected that. It wasn’t like anybody else Willow invited knew about Buffy’s connection to the two other crazy people at the party. Nobody besides Xander and Giles, anyway, and they weren’t telling.

Willow had done some major damage control at the party right after Spike’s epic storm-out, playing like they’d come on her parents’ invitation, a pair of UC Sunnydale grad students summoned by one of the Rosenberg professors. Xander backed her up right away. She’d hoped it would help, and it turned out she hadn’t needed to bother. What with nobody knowing and the cheerleading squad performing as well as it was, Buffy’s standing remained secure.

Then again, having two crazy people living in her basement could’ve been spun in such a way to turn the notoriety sure to come of that into genuine social cachet. “I’m having trouble thinking of a better setup for a horror movie,” she said to everyone else in the almost-empty library.

“It’d really depend,” Xander said, ignoring the math textbook he wasn’t even bothering to use as an armrest. He and Willow had the library as their study hall classroom for as long as Giles kept signing off on it. “They might be the sort of crazy people that can see the ghosts and fight them off when nobody else does. Which is still using that setup, just playing with the scenario.”

“Are they still doing okay?” Willow asked.

“Yeah,” said Buffy. “Things smoothed themselves out pretty fast. They’ve been going out more, which isn’t totally a bad thing. They keep bringing back citrus fruit that they swear they find growing wild in empty lots.”

“That sounds… productive of them.”

“Willow, you need to understand, this isn’t a decision worth the regret you’re giving it.” Giles pulled up a chair and sat down with everyone, which Buffy knew meant business. “You made it in kindness, and while there were unanticipated consequences – and which is why, _yes_ , you should have asked for more information – you did your best with what you knew. I wouldn’t say forget so much as try to learn from the mistakes.”

“I kind of did get to know them better. Sort of. Not really all that well, but hey, now I know they like grapefruit.”

“You got extra double-strength confirmation that they’re both insane,” Xander pointed out.

“She ought to have considered the consequences,” Giles said to Buffy after they’d gone back to shelving their way through the fiction section. As otherwise-free periods went, library intern beat study hall – and on the days they got everything done ahead of time, it was that, too. “Willow could have easily asked your mother for advice or some guidance on their, ah, specific peculiarities, for lack of anything more precise. Or discussed it with them beyond simply offering the invitation.”

“She does sort of steamroll her way into things. I think she figured that as long as everyone was happy and having fun things would be fine.” She slid a few more books home. Conversations like this were why she’d signed up for library TA again this semester and would keep on going for as long as she could manage. Giles was basically her boss but he never talked down to her, and he never had any trouble hearing what she was trying to say. “Which they were, sort of. I mean, Drusilla did go all crazy, but she wasn’t being gung-ho wacked out. She was just saying crazy stuff. And then she wasn’t. She finished the crazy stuff and afterwards she just went back to how she usually was. I don’t know. I can get trying to pretend things are normal, but I think…I don’t think they pretend all that much.” Performed, maybe. But Buffy knew performing from pretending.

“What you said earlier about them being all right, that wasn’t speculation?”

“Don’t tell me _you’re_ interested in meeting them.”

“I’ll admit to curiosity.”

“Not that you’re a wandering Englishmen looking for a couple of fellow stiff upper lippers to fight off homesickness?”

“Nothing of the sort,” he said, his voice light and his face all soft around his eyes.

-

“Okay. I’ve got the questions I have to ask for the assignment, and a few I wrote myself. I don’t have to use your real name for this, but I can if you want. Or I can call you John or Jack or whatever if you don’t want me to say Spike.”

“John’s fine.”

“Right.” Dawn clicked her pen. “You’re a smoker.” He laughed and stubbed out the butt of the cigarette he’d just finished. “Just getting everything established.” The October breezes tickled her papers, and she moved her health studies textbook onto the corner to hold them down. “How long have you smoked cigarettes?”

“A while. Since, hm.” He hummed, thinking. “How old are you?”

If it was anybody but Spike asking that, and in any way besides _how_ he’d asked it, Dawn would’ve given something other than the real answer. Sometimes she rounded up to the nearest birthday or just said she was old enough, practically a teenager, not a kid anymore. But most people who asked her that wanted to accuse her of something, or make sure she knew how young she was. Like anybody let her forget that. Spike just wanted to know. “Eleven.”

He hummed again. Maybe thinking about how he’d been when he was her age. “Started when I was twelve.”

“What?” There wasn’t any way she’d go around sticking something like a lit cigarette in her mouth. She couldn’t even picture how she might go up to someone and ask them to bum her one like how they did in old movies and TV shows. Even if she was a year older she’d still – “I mean, can you give me a number of years?”

“Twenty-five.”

Her fingers went numb for a moment. “Got it.” She hunched over her notebook to write the number down and get her face back to normal before she looked back up at him. “Okay, you started when you were a kid, you’ve never stopped. Were you pressured into it?”

“Pressured?”

“Did anyone say, you _must_ try this or we’ll beat you up?”

“God, no,” he shook his head. “It was offered. Freely. Turned it down once, got curious, so the next time he pulled out the pack I asked and he gave me one.”

“Who was he?”

“A schoolmate of mine, a year ahead of me. Go ahead and put down Tom – not his name but it’ll do.”

“Okay. Did you want to be like him? I mean, did you think this Tom was cool?”

“If your teacher’s got you looking for someone who’s regretting getting addicted to anything, you might as well stop things here.”

“What? No, I don’t – my assignment’s to interview someone who takes drugs or who used to, and tobacco’s a drug and I thought since you’re here, I don’t even have to call my aunt in Mendocino.”

“Just warning you there’s no regret here.”

“Really?”

“Maybe a little for sometimes wishing they didn’t cost so much over here in the States, but the cigs themselves? Not in the least. I made the choice myself, found I liked it, and decided to stick with it. Tom wasn’t anyone special, just someone who didn’t mind sharing.”

“All right.” She clicked her pen again and straightened her back. “Next question. Tell me what you like about smoking.”

“Well, now.” He smiled. “I like the way it hits my brain, and all the lights deep inside. Turns them on, keeps them on. I like that it turns _down_ the noise. First thing I loved about smoking was how it kept noise down. All this static going on, it got turned off. Don’t know how else to explain that. Helps me wind down if I get strung up tight, helps me focus if I’m bouncing all over the place and can’t put one thought to another. I’ve got a thing for my hands to play with – you’ve got a cig in your mouth and nobody thinks a thing of you fiddling with the lighter. The way the light plays with the smoke – you can get that blowing out a candle but it’s not the same, it’s not nearly as much, it doesn’t last as long and it’s not as fun to watch. It’s relaxing.” While he’d been talking, he’d stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit it up. Then he stood up and moved to sit downwind from Dawn. She wanted to ask something else, but he didn’t give her the chance.

“When you stop everything else, just that little feeling, that’s a lovely one. Smoking hits everything inside and out, the brain to the heart to the eyes. It’s all brought delight. I’ve taken a lot of things in my time, and cigarettes were the first, and they’re the only one still with me. Smoking’s staying right where it is. Maybe I’m doing it out here on the back porch and not down in the basement, I’ll concede that to your mum, but we had those same anti-smoking posters back in England, too, and I never much cared for them. Not when smoking’s been so good to me.”

She should’ve borrowed one of Dad’s Dictaphones. _Because it’s fun_ would have to do. “So you knew the risks and started anyway.”

“I figured one couldn’t hurt too much to try. It just managed to work right from the very start.”

-

Aside from having to call a moratorium on statue-statute puns by the time Buffy was eight, neither of her daughters were all that keen on involving themselves with the details of gallery work. They seemed happy to file it under _mom stuff_ and leave it there. Joyce didn’t often feel like pressing the issue, especially these days, when so little of her job involved art itself. Not just the exhibiting thereof, but also the buying, selling, and transportation, and that last one usually involved a lot of insurance policies and double-checking them if state lines got crossed. And every so often, real estate and local zoning regulations.

“I’ve wanted to expand the space for a while now, so it’s mostly me making sure I don’t get into a one-thing-leads-to-another argument. I’m not saying it needs a little shop. If we put one in, it wouldn’t just be for the added revenue. We’re solvent enough, and we’re not struggling. I’m not saying putting one in would start us struggling, either; I’ve worked in a couple of places that did pretty well with the little shops they put in. But I know if we go for that, it’ll just be a few minutes before Gladys starts really pushing for a café, and there’s no way I’ve got the time to start looking into the groundwork we’d need to take that project on.”

Drusilla hummed in what could have been acknowledgement and pushed the canned tomatoes to the back of the pantry to make room for the cereal without looking back at her. Sometimes it was hard to tell if she was listening to the world outside her head or the voices inside it. Spike had explained it was best for everyone to let those moments pass and be content with Drusilla’s physical presence. “But what do you think?” She peered over at Drusilla, who hummed again. Joyce sighed and turned back to the bag of groceries she hadn’t finished putting away.

“I think that with a small business such as yours in a town like Sunnydale you’d have no trouble getting a fair-rate loan from any reasonable bank.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s a university town, Sunnydale. It’s an art gallery, yours, so not an entity so concerned with financial quartering as much as many other places. You’ve got your reasons for its being that go beyond the money, you’ve got steady work from students and teachers and all the artists coming for the chance at exhibiting.” She turned to look at Joyce, nothing but calm and ordinary. “Securing a long-term loan on a lower rate wouldn’t be likely to raise much trouble for you, if you need to do work to expand the place.”

“I – I’d be lying if I’d said I hadn’t put much thought into those questions.”

“They’re good questions to give your thoughts to. See what you need settled inside your head before going on to find if something else – what was it you’d said about the zones for concern?”

“The zoning board.” She didn’t know what to say and fell back to the facts of the situation. “If, well, if we go with Gladys’ suggestion of a café, Brenda said we’d have to do a lot of remodeling and electric work for all the infrastructure, but I’m almost more concerned with getting the permits to serve food. I can get a few bottles of wine and some trays of bruschetta arranged for an opening before my morning coffee, but I haven’t even thought about deciding if we’re going in for serving hot beverages on a daily basis, never mind sandwiches.”

“Making sure the ongoing costs make themselves worth the fuss.” Drusilla nodded and held her hands together. She pressed her index fingers against her lips, then pointed them at Joyce. “Would either new venture be trying to supplement the art or stand beside it?”

“I think stand beside it. The art itself is why the gallery’s here, after all.”

“Fair. That’s very fair. I’d be happy to help you get a plan in motion, get things set down, if you want a hand with anything.”

“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”

“Just let me know, and I’ll make us some tea. Though I have to say before this goes far, I’m not much used to American banking. All my experiences are from back home. Money’s simply money but rules on how to spend it aren’t always the same.”

“You knew English bankers?”

“I knew a whole wunch of them.”

“Right.” She’d have to ask Mr. Giles about a British English dictionary sometime. “Well, it’s very generous of you to offer your experience. Thank you. I’ll be sure to remember if I decide to pursue this, and I’m sure I know someone that –”

“Someone that already speaks American money,” she giggled.

“Right,” Joyce laughed harder than the joke deserved, just relieved to be laughing. “Someone that already speaks American money –”

“It does love to talk, you know.” She smiled. “Be sure to keep in touch.” She closed the pantry door and went out to join Spike and Dawn on the back porch, leaving Joyce with the last of the produce.


	5. hide my head here in the streets again

Once upon a time, Buffy only knew about _five-year plans_ as song lyrics from one of her dad’s favorite bands. Then, thanks to a dedicated ninth-grade world history teacher, she’d found out they were a failure of central economic planning and collective farming systems that failed to account for the facts of eleven different time zones and millions of people already adjusting to the upheaval of a new social and economic system. Plus the lyrics. Now she knew them as lyrics, economic failure, and a fairly workable therapeutic exercise.

That might be where the _wrapped in golden chains_ part came in.

It had been her old doctor’s idea and one of the first things that’d helped Buffy get her head around the fact that she was going to have a future. Her five-year plan didn’t need to be structured or elaborate, and Dr. Coe kept maintaining the fact that they didn’t need to be grandiose or even plain old grand. When they’d first drawn one up together, Dr. Coe reminded her seven-year plans were outside the scope of the exercise, so graduating from college didn’t need to be there. Five years would cover _applying_ to college, which Buffy knew she could handle. Also the SATs, which were on there too. 

She still took the plan out sometimes and looked it over. The sheet of yellow lined paper ripped from a legal pad, the top kind of ragged from the rip not being clean across, lived in a folder from Dr. Coe’s office out in Brentwood, and the folder lived safely in the back of her closet. More and more, reading the plan felt like seeing something she’d drawn in first or second grade, something she couldn’t make again because she wasn’t that simple a person anymore. It gave her a wet, tired happiness to have the reminder of that simplicity.

 _Make it to twenty_ was the first item on the list.

“Oh, no way,” Cordelia said in between jumps out on the blacktop during afternoon practice. “You won’t find me hanging around here. Strap me to a rocket and shoot me out of here if it comes to that, but I’m not sticking around one _second_ longer than I have to.”

“In all fairness to your hometown, I only moved here a few months ago.”

“I suppose it’s possible you’ve been so preoccupied with yourself that you haven’t managed to realize just how freaking Podunk a town Sunnydale is.” Their ropes hit the ground, fwap-fwap-fwap, as their side-by-side jumping began to sync up and gather speed. “The reality will hit you soon enough, trust me.”

“Yeah-huh.” Buffy began alternating one-footed jumps. “I thought maybe a couple years here and then transfer somewhere else.”

“Not a bad plan.”

“Aren’t you skipping the whole higher education racket? Rack up public library late fees instead of student loans?”

“I don’t know what you want to do with your life after high school, but I’ve wanted to move to LA and be an actress since I was four.” Cordelia began crisscrossing her rope like she was back on a grade school playground. Which they were, sort of, since the day was nice enough they were doing their high-impact cardio outside. “As soon as I graduate, I’m headed down south. Hey, you’re from LA, right? Actual LA, not like out from San Bernardino?”

“Yeah.”

“You know anyone in the business?”

“Why does everyone think that? Just because I grew up across the street from one former teen heartthrob and had swimming lessons with rock stars’ kids everyone thinks I’ve got some _pull_ in the industry.” She slammed her feet down flat on the blacktop and went to get some water. Cordelia followed a moment later. “My dad moved away anyway, so I don’t even live in the city itself anymore. I guess I’ve got a – a couple people I know, but they’re just friends, and it’d be friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend type stuff.”

“You’re kidding, right? Hollywood’s _built_ on that sort of nepotism and dynastic power transfer. Just look at Nicholas Cage.”

“Point taken.”

“But it’s not a bad thing if you don’t know what to do with your life. Not everyone knows how to plan. What were you thinking of doing, anyway?”

“My dad’s in architecture and my mom’s in art so I know I don’t want to do either of those.”

“I’m sure you’ll be great at whatever you decide to dedicate yourself towards.”

“Thank you for the empty platitude.”

“Anytime, any day.”

The rest of the practice session was core and upper-body work, a little team-building and an apology that the gymnastics mats were already in use or else they’d practice scorpions and falling. But next time they’d get to that. It’d be something to look forward to.

“You need a ride?” Cordelia offered in the locker room.

“Nah, I got my bike.”

If she stayed in Sunnydale, it’d be easy to live off-campus the first couple of years. If Dad didn’t move, she’d be able to transfer to UCSD no fuss no trouble. She’d have a place off-campus there too, if dorm life was too much. If her parents wanted her around. If they didn’t want her out of their sight, which was different than wanting her around. And if she couldn’t find it in herself to be upset at them for that, then she knew getting angry was a waste of effort, especially when she couldn’t channel it into shouting out school pride cheers from her diaphragm. Biking home would have to do.

She’d crossed Oak and was on her way through the park when she spotted them. It wasn’t the biggest possible surprise, just an unexpected out-of-context encounter. But there wasn’t any mistaking that coat and hair, not even at a hundred paces. Mostly it went to show that Cordelia and Xander’s assertions about Sunnydale being a seriously tiny town were truer than she’d thought. She kept expecting the place to be bigger. Some part of her hadn’t ever left Los Angeles.

Which she meant in a totally not-morbid way, entirely and completely, even inside her head.

Dru was inside the dog run, down on her knees, squeezing her arms around one of the biggest dogs Buffy had ever seen that at fifty paces in dim light could’ve been mistaken for a pony. She was nuzzling it, ruffling its ears, laughing and babbling all sorts of _good doggies_ and _sweeties_ and _yes you ares_ that the dog thanked her for with big licks up and down her face while its owner just looked on while the crazy woman kneeling in the dirt and ruining her jeans. Spike was rather sensibly standing outside the run, leaning forward and resting his arms on the fence demarking the dogs’ park from the human one.

He gave her a greeting, and that was all. One of the reasons it was nice to be around them when she was down: she never had to avoid talking about how she was feeling if it never came up to begin with.

“I take it you like dogs.” Also nice: being able to jump right into a topic without any small talk.

“They’re all right. Dru does – loves them, really – so I’ve got to have at least a bit of fondness for them.”

“What’s your favorite, then?”

“Sorry?”

“What do you like? When it comes to this sort of thing. Animal-type companionability. Horses, cats, lizards, hamsters?”

He cocked his head, thinking for a moment. “Birds,” he said firmly. “I like birds.”

-

It was true Sunnydale had a lot going for it, from good school districts to very reasonable property values. Even so, Joyce would’ve picked a lot of other places well before deciding to settle there. If the gallery hadn’t been available, she might not even have stayed in California. But Francine, one of her best friends from grad school, had told her that it would be changing hands soon, how the old manager was retiring and looking for someone with a fresh eye. It ended up being the best timing Joyce had ever managed. Walking out of one phase of her life and into another with just enough space in between them to pack a suitcase.

It would be a while longer before she got to the phase of having the house entirely to herself, which she didn’t mind waiting for. Kissing the girls good-bye early Thursday morning at the train station hadn’t hurt, not when she’d kissed them good-bye for longer than four days. Especially not when she wasn’t going to spend the whole Thanksgiving break entirely in her own company. Spike and Drusilla weren’t quite part of the household, but they’d still be in Sunnydale while the girls were down in San Diego.

“This way your father doesn’t have to be in a car for ten hours,” she’d explained Wednesday night when Dawn wanted to know why her father wasn’t doing an in-person pickup. They’d been sitting on Dawn’s bed, and she’d hugged her favorite tiger and stared at the ceiling to avoid looking at her mother. “He’s not just a quick drive away anymore. You know that.”

“Is that the reason or the excuse?”

“The reason.” It’d been both – keeping him away from Sunnydale and the guests in the basement, and also making it a little easier for everyone. “The train won’t take that much more time than driving. He’ll pick you up at the station.”

She’d nodded sullenly, and Joyce knew she knew the full reality behind the decision. Sometimes she didn’t like how aware her younger daughter was of the adult workings of the world. “He sent us those pictures of the new house.”

“It’s a very nice house.”

“Jeanine wasn’t in any of them.”

“Maybe that’s because she was the one who took the pictures.” That got a little smile out of her, which Joyce knew was all she’d get. She’d kissed her good-night, and a few hours later she kissed her good-bye, and now she was filling in at the front desk to let Linda go home early. Joyce spent two hours on a grand total of three visitors who breezed through and bought one postcard apiece before she decided Sunnydale wasn’t going to suffer unduly if the gallery closed early for a long holiday weekend.

When she got home, Spike and Drusilla were eating lunch at the dining room table, focused enough in conversation they didn’t notice Joyce right away, but stopped completely when they did. She knew they tended to keep to themselves, and it was probably just them thinking Joyce wouldn’t be home until past six to think about eating somewhere other than the basement. Before either of them had the chance to speak, Joyce gave them as parental a nonchalant _don’t-mind-me-just-passing-through_ nod and wave and smile as she’d managed to perfect and went right on breezing through.

When she came back down almost an hour later, the dishwasher was loaded, and they were sitting in the living room, clearly waiting for her. For how long, Joyce wouldn’t try to guess, but if she’d wanted to she’d have put down _long enough to get fidgety_. Spike jumped to his feet when she walked into the room, his hands clasped together in front, Drusilla’s rising more controlled but her posture equally contrite.

“Mrs. Summers –” Spike began.

“Sit down, please.” She gestured for good measure, but they both stayed on their feet.

“We won’t make a habit of it if you’d rather we not,” he pressed on. “I’d just thought, with both your daughters gone for the weekend and you out of the house a while, Dru and I might –”

“We’d thought to be finished by the time you got back. You work long past this, most days,” Drusilla explained.

“I know I’ve never asked your permission and if I should have then I’m sorry for making that mistake and if you’d prefer we stop with it right here and now we understand and we’ll both keep to that happily,” he finished in a rush.

“It’s not a problem for me if you want to eat in the dining room,” Joyce said. “Especially since you know to clean up afterwards. I don’t mind if you two go on ahead with it.” They stared at her, Drusilla with her face blank and Spike with his head tilted like he hadn’t heard her correctly. Hoping she was taking the right cue, “If it ever would be, I’d let you both know well ahead of time. Like if I had some old friends coming over. But I’d tell my daughters the exact same thing. I don’t mind. Really, I don’t.”

“Neither do we if that’s what you want,” Drusilla said.

“Like you said, both my daughters are out of the house. Why don’t you join me up here for dinner tonight? I’d thought I’d order in, but I’m sure I can pull something together.”

“Oh,” Spike said quietly. “Yes, if that’s all right.”

“It is,” Joyce said again. That seemed to be enough, so at seven, they ate together in the dining room, with full-place settings and plates and napkins, the two of them freshly showered for the occasion of eating a sit-down meal with their host. Drusilla murmured grace over the pantry tomato sauce and freezer-burned broccoli, and Spike had the most impeccable table manners she’d ever seen. They listened carefully when Joyce talked about the technical details of assessing potential electrical work, jumped to clear the table before Joyce could even fold up her napkin, and when the dishwasher was humming and the leftovers packed away, disappeared back into the basement.

Thanksgiving Day came with sleeping in until eight and tea instead of coffee for her morning caffeine. She sipped it on the back porch, the air a little cooler than she remembered from last year. One midmorning phone call to the girls later – Jeanine was treating them fine; dinner would be roast duck served at dinnertime instead of turkey in midafternoon; Hank was happy to say hello and Joyce was happy to not say much more than that – and the rest of the day stretched out before her, empty and waiting to be filled with whatever she wanted. Maybe even with paperwork. Maybe that was why when Drusilla and Spike came through the basement door, Drusilla declaring they were heading to the arboretum and Spike inviting Joyce along, she said yes to their offer. If they minded having to wait for Joyce to get herself ready and dig out her one cold-weather hat from the back of her closet, they didn’t show it. 

“You’re sure you don’t mind me coming along?” Joyce asked as she pulled on her shoes, just to be certain. 

“If we hadn’t wanted you, we wouldn’t have offered the invitation at the start,” Drusilla explained patiently.

“Of course,” Joyce said.

They took the long route to the campus’ well-manicured greenbelt. The school was almost empty, with only a few students who hadn’t gone home for the long weekend hanging around, but they gave the three of them more than enough space to make it seem like they were alone among the lecture halls. Drusilla was fairly present, easily chatting with Joyce. Spike stayed quiet, and she couldn’t tell if it was bothering Drusilla or not – if they asked him something directly, he answered, and if they didn’t, kept his words to himself.

“I’ve been meaning to come here for ages,” Joyce said, tapping the fence posts as they walked through the student-run community garden. “We drove through here – well, _past_ here a couple of times, when we moved to Sunnydale, but I haven’t bothered to make the time since.”

“That’s much the same the whole world over.” Drusilla frowned, then stopped to roll her jaw and flick her tongue out. She repeated the movements twice, yawning hard at the end of both sequences, and shook her head and squared her shoulders. “Ugh, hurtful.” She clapped her hands over her eyes. “Hurtful!” she spat out.

“Is something wrong?”

“No, nothing’s wrong. Nothing’s going bad. It’ll be raining soon so they’re trying to make fun of things. That’s all.”

“I see.”

“They think it’s their work that draws it out, but it’s not.” She let her arms fall. “They’ve nothing to do with the rain but they like to sing about it when it’s pressing in. Another two days, maybe three and it’ll be here, and they always have to have their fun before it arrives. And I don’t want to be upset when they’re having such fun. Even if it’s hurting. All the pressing and all the singing, it gets so – so –”

“It’s all right, pet,” Spike said, stepping up to Drusilla’s side, turning himself around so they stood face-to-face. “You know they don’t mean to hurt you.” It was the most words he’d said together the whole day.

“No,” she shook her head. “But they still don’t _stop_ ,” she almost whimpered.

“It’ll get quiet again soon.” He took her hands in his. “I’ll be here when they’re finished.”

“I’m sorry, but who’s –”

“All of Dru’s little voices,” Spike said quietly, not looking at Joyce.

“Oh.”

“It’s all right, Mrs. Summers,” Drusilla said, steadying her tone. “I know they don’t mean me any harm. They just like to sing. It’s better if I try to not be mad at them for liking to sing. And it’s pretty, sometimes. They do sing pretty to me. It just hurts to have it all so much, is what makes it hard to get on through. There?” She asked Spike.

“Here,” he said, not looking away from Drusilla. The word seemed enough to make her happy, and she nodded. Spike let go of her hands and she took one of his in hers, and the three of them started walking again. 

“Now, the arboretum,” she said to Joyce, “you were talking about the arboretum.”

“Oh – well, yes, I was. But that’s really all I had to say, this is me finally making time for this. Thank you for helping me with that. And now that I think about it, I really should make more of an effort to get to know Sunnydale as a town, not just where I work and my daughters go to school. I live here now.”

“We’ll help with that, and gladly, if you like,” Drusilla said. “Spike and I haven’t lived here as long as you and your daughters, but I’d say we’ve more time on our hands to wander.”

“After the chores are done,” Spike cut in. Joyce assumed it was a joke, but he’d said it so straight she almost couldn’t tell.

“Yes, after they’re done, but when they are, we’ve the time to sniff out the forgotten trees and little meadows. Like that spot off Eureka – left to seed since long before anyone here got to Sunnydale, from the looks of it.”

“Oh, that vacant lot by the Lutheran church?” Joyce asked.

“That’d be the one. Good spot to sit at night when it’s still warm out. There’s all the mulberry trees off Seventh. Spike, you and I should show them to Mrs. Summers today if she wishes.” He shrugged, his words vanished again.

“I think the arboretum’s enough for now,” Joyce said.

“Fair suitable,” Drusilla said.

The three of them walked the rest of the length of the arboretum through campus, stopping for Spike to smoke a cigarette, and out to downtown and one of the few open restaurants. It’d gotten nice enough they went for an outdoor table, and the conversation was still so much just her and Drusilla that it was a surprise when Spike said, “Magpies.”

“What?” She almost hadn’t registered it as a word.

“Magpies. Sorry, they’re just –” He pointed at the lawn across the street where a few blue-black-white birds were strutting their stuff. “They’re special birds, but – sorry. Just some magpies, is all. I didn’t mean to interrupt.” He made a move to go back to his sandwich, but Drusilla clicked her tongue.

“It’s hardly a bother. I know how you like them. Why don’t you tell us what makes them special?”

“You know I’ve told you about it before.”

“Then you’ll tell us again,” she said, and looked at Joyce for a cue she almost didn’t recognize.

“Go on,” Joyce said to Spike, hoping she’d read it right. “We’re not in a hurry to get anywhere.”

“You know they’re endemic here, yeah? These yellow-billed ones. Not here as in Sunnydale, but here as in this part of the world, this little bit of California – through the Central Valley and a bit to the mountains on either side, in the chaparral. We’re lucky to see them here in town. And I told you they’re smart. All corvids are. They nest together, roost together. Defend their nests and chicks as a group, if they have to. Ever see crows mobbing a hawk? Magpies do that, too.”

“What’s on its way?” Drusilla asked.

“That depends. Four’s a boy or a birth – we’ll see if anyone else heads off or drops by.”

He didn’t say much more, but it seemed to help him enough that by the time they got home he was more or less himself again. Neither of them protested over Joyce’s invitation to join her for dinner upstairs, either, and by Saturday night they didn’t even need that.

Except that when the girls got back during the first rainstorm of the season to a good and proper homemade dinner, neither of them were willing to come up from the basement to join everyone else around the dining room table. Spike even smiled as Joyce pressed the invitation as much as she dared, trying to parse out their refusal as they sat in the basement, him cross-legged on the bed with a book in his lap and Drusilla looking up from the rug on the floor, her doll cradled in her arms.

“Buffy and Dawn are back,” he said as explanation, and that seemed to be the full width and breadth of things.

“But thank you for the offering,” said Drusilla. “It’s quite appreciated.”

-

The first time Dawn talked to Jeanine was on the phone the night before she went down to see Dad for a long Columbus Day weekend. She figured the conversation was something about making the in-person meeting easier because everyone already felt like they knew each other. Easing kids and step-parents together came up pretty often in the library’s divorced parent guidebooks. Dawn couldn’t imagine Dad reading those, but with Thanksgiving on its way, she could imagine him scheduling time for the four of them to spend together doing all sorts of wholesome family activities like museum visits and beach trips.

“I don’t dislike her,” she told Spike three days before vacation started, when she should have been packing her suitcase. “I mean, she’s not cruel to kids for fun or anything, she’s just – she doesn’t know how to relax around me and Buffy. Like we’re in Dad’s life enough she needs our approval before things get more serious. Which, okay, it’s nice how she’s thinking of us, but we’re in Dad’s life for what, three months tops for the whole year? We’re not around enough for her to need us to give her the go-ahead. She makes him happy, go for it.” Dru nodded. “She doesn’t _need_ to be our mother, we’ve got Mom, she knows we’ve got Mom, but she can’t be a mom, she can’t be an extra-big sister, she doesn’t want to be our babysitter, so…I’d have thought she’d try for the cool older cousin thing.”

“Either of us got to worry about where we fit in all this?” Spike asked.

“No way, you two go beyond categories like that. You’re past everything. You’re just – you’re both just _you.”_

“Now I know you’ve had plenty,” Dru said, picking up Dawn’s teacup. “Time to cut you off.”

“No, no, not the precious tea!” She made grabbing-hands at the rising cup, full of milky and sugary caffeinated goodness. “Just give me one last sip, please, oh please.”

“If the teamaker’s said you’ve had your fill, that’s the end of it,” Dru said, then downed the rest in one go. Dawn leaned back and pouted while Spike looked on, smirking.

“It’s just two o’clock,” she tried to protest.

“Half-life of six hours, your bedtime’s eight, we’ve already cut it close by offering you the hard stuff,” Spike said. “Go run around some, work it out of your system.”

“But it’s raining.”

“Drizzling,” he said. “At _best.”_

Between going out in the rain and arguing with someone from England about the weather, Dawn picked the one she had a chance of winning against and took the rain. On her bike, not on foot, because she needed to really feel herself moving. She sped along to the nearest park, past that to the railroad tracks and then the big empty space that used to be tomato fields with the old factory off in the distance before looping around and taking the long way home. Looking at Sunnydale from a rain hood wedged up under a bike helmet with no real sunlight wasn’t the best way to see it, but it worked to make her happy that in three and a half weeks she’d be back in San Diego for winter vacation. Back to a city that went higher than four stories and had more than one public library.

Two days before vacation started, after she picked just two stuffed animals to bring along with her, she figured that was enough for the afternoon and wandered down to the basement to hang out with Dru and do her homework. “There’s a British grocery store Mr. Giles asked us to see and get him some stuff they don’t even sell at the health food store. He said he’d pay us back if we kept the receipt but Buffy insists it’s going to be a present. But do you want anything? Do you know if Spike does?”

Dru didn’t look up from folding shirts. “Just the kingdom.”

“Sorry?”

“I thought we’d explained. Ah, no matter, no mind. It’s not so much him wanting it as his obligation for it, he’s the next proper high king on the top of the cathedral.”

“Um.” Wait it out, that’s what she had to do. “Right. I’ll see if they sell kingdoms there.”

“Oh, you don’t _buy_ them. It’s on a bigger payment system than just money.”

“Yeah.” Dawn went back to her math homework while Dru kept sorting laundry and talking about kings and queens bound up in blue silk and tried not to listen when she began discussing the butchering sessions that happened twice a month, but couldn’t keep her out entirely when she said what Spike really missed was this one kind of breakfast cereal and she’d give her and Buffy a written list if they reminded her later. “What? Oh, right, sure thing. Just follow the list.”

“Have you got the place’s number to ask ahead? It’d be hurtful to everyone if we ask for things you’ve got no way of giving.”

Buffy didn’t, but Mr. Giles did, and Spike and Dru’s shopping list was a total of six items, ranked in order of importance. “We’ll get right on these,” Buffy promised. “You’re asking for some of the same stuff as him, too.”

“Might be nice to meet the man someday,” Spike said.

“Trust me, you wouldn’t get along. I mean, at all. There’s just no way,” Buffy said, laughing like it was a joke.

Dawn wasn’t as sure about that as Buffy was, but didn’t want to argue. Not when Buffy was putting on her please-believe-me-no-really smile. Better to just not poke at it.

Visiting Dad in San Diego was a lot better than going to see him in Los Angeles. It’d been tough to be home but not home-home. Dawn wouldn’t admit to anyone but her diary that she was glad it’d just been two long weekends in Dad’s sad little apartment before he’d moved down to a real house in San Diego. She’d said good-bye to the house she’d grown up in the day she and Buffy and Mom had all driven up to Sunnydale and hadn’t wanted to say hello to it ever again. Just being in the same city was almost too close to it. But now that Dad had moved, it’d be long weekends and big school breaks in Dad’s condo. With Jeanine.

She wished she could’ve told Jeanine crazy people made better omelets than she did. At least she could tell the crazy people that when she got home.

The worst part about staying at Dad’s was that Spike and Dru didn’t exist when she was there. Not in any meaningful way to Dawn’s own life, at least. It wasn’t like they stopped being real and turned into her imaginary friends the moment the train pulled out of Sunnydale and she and Buffy were on their way. They were still _there_ when Dad and Jeanine picked them up and took them out to a late lunch, still sleeping in the basement and folding her shirts when she walked into her San Diego bedroom. But she couldn’t talk about them at dinner when Dad wanted to know how her life was going. Sending a postcard was probably okay, since she’d be able to say she was sending it to her own friends, except they shared a mailing address and she’d have to come up with a lie about why she was mailing it to herself.

It wasn’t like talking to them would be such a bad thing. Not pretending they didn’t exist and going along with the story that Mom didn’t have a couple of crazy people living in the basement. They did everyone’s laundry and cleaned the toilets; if things were measured by how much people helped at home then they deserved to be there more than she did.

When Mom called to see how Dawn and Buffy were doing, she did her best to not mention them. Which was sort of okay, if Dawn thought about it like Mom checking in on people who didn’t live in Sunnydale. She listened in from the hallway whenever Mom talked to Dad and she could always tell when they talked about Buffy. It was usually about Buffy. Okay, almost always about Buffy. Dawn knew she didn’t need the attention Buffy needed so it made sense Mom talked to Dad about Buffy way more than she talked about her. Complete sense to worry about someone who was sick.

“We went to the British grocery Mr. Giles asked about,” Dawn said. “For the cereal and spreads and stuff he wanted. And we got extra in case he needed us to stock up. Do you remember if he asked for anything specific?”

“I thought he gave you a shopping list.”

“He did, but did he ask for anything _else_ since we left? Since he knows we might go back if there’s more stuff and I don’t mind getting it out of my allowance if he really misses something?”

“You know, I think he did. But let me go check. Oh, here they are.” She heard Mom chuckle and felt better right away. This was the kind of pretending she was okay with her parents doing. “Spike, Dawn’s on the phone. Was there –”

“Couldn’t you just put him on?”

“Just hang on a moment. Spike, Dawn wanted to ask about that grocery –” She heard Spike say something loudly, and then Mom dropped something in Dawn’s ear and then said something that was almost an apology and Dawn was left with a dial tone. She was just listening to the phone try to connect to someone who wasn’t there and couldn’t tell her what had happened. She couldn’t call to ask about it, either. She couldn’t say anything directly to anyone until she got back to Sunnydale in just over two weeks. She’d have to find ways to ask around the shape of things, if anyone was willing to talk about them on the phone.

She could call Xander or Willow and ask them to talk to Mom and then get them to talk to her and that’d get around using names because people in high school totally went by names like Spike and Drusilla and it wasn’t lying to say Buffy knew them first and it’d work if Dawn wanted to get around them not existing in her Dad’s house and it’d be – it’d be a stupid, silly idea because if her mom used the kinds of words she’d said just before she’d apologized it wasn’t something Spike and Dru would talk about to Buffy’s friends. Not even Buffy’s best friends. Maybe to Buffy, but only if she was in the same room as them while they told her.

Dawn had some very choice words for her journal that night.

“But everything’s fine,” she pressed Mom over the phone the next time she called. “You’d tell me if something was wrong.”

“Of course I would. They’re both doing okay.”

She wanted to ask _normal okay or the sort of okay for Buffy’s okays_. “Jeanine’s going to church tomorrow. She said I could come if I wanted to.”

“That was nice of her.”

“Yeah. And – okay, it’s not really a church. She called it a meeting house. Like a gathering, or an assembly. You sit quietly until you’re done.”

“Well.” Dawn could almost see Mom twist her hands around the phone cord. “It might be nice for you to go with her. Not just because she’ll be part of your family someday and you should get to know her better, which is important. It’s also important to stay open to new ideas about the world and be willing to experience new parts of it.”

“Right.” Those were exactly the words Mom said to Buffy right after she’d come home from the hospital. “Even if everything goes wrong, I’ll say it’s a learning experience.”

“There we go.”

It wasn’t that Mom didn’t like churches; she just didn’t use them for religion. She went to them the same way she went to art museums. It wasn’t as though Mom didn’t want her or Buffy going to religious ceremonies as long as they were what they really believed. She’d still support and love them but it wasn’t something she’d ever be able to participate in or really share with them. Dawn thought it was pretty cool of Mom to be so honest about that.

The Friends meeting house wasn’t like the church in Chicago where Aunt Arlene had gotten married. It wasn’t something big and impressive designed to make you feel small and little in the universe: it was more like a community center. Which it pretty much was, when Dawn thought about it. She didn’t usually go into a church unless someone was getting married or just had a kid or had just – if they needed their – if there was a funeral. The meeting wasn’t anything like that. Most of it was just sitting quietly and listening to the sound of the voice in her head as it spoke. The meeting happened on Sundays because that was easiest for everyone, not because Sunday was any more holy than the other days of the week. According to Jeanine, no day was any more holy than they rest because they all were.

A while ago, Dawn had asked Willow about Jewish Saturday services. She’d explained everything, including the little meal at the end called an _oneg_ , and she’d even talked about all the prayers for the different kinds of foods. There was a little meal at the end of the Friends meeting, too, but that was mostly because grown-ups liked drinking coffee. Nobody said any prayers for anything, just talked about how things were going and what was happening. Jeanine had been speaking highly of her Dad, and Buffy, and her, and most people looked like they actually were pleased to meet her. Dawn got a cup of decaf with extra milk, no sugar.

“I might go again next Sunday,” Dawn said when Mom asked about it. “It wasn’t cool or anything, but it was nice. Just sitting there and thinking. It was only like three or four people that talked in the whole thing.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself.”

Jeanine had invited Buffy, too, but she’d mostly meant it for Dawn, and it was really easy to see why when Buffy and Dad seemed to be doing a lot better with each other over the next few days after that one afternoon. He didn’t protest when she asked if she could get a latte when he and Jeanine stopped for coffee one afternoon, but also asked Dawn if she wanted a hot chocolate. On Christmas, Jeanine laughed when Dawn told Willow’s joke about it being Jewish Chinese Food Day, and on the twenty-seventh, they all went out ice skating. Dad had rented the rink for an hour and a half, and Dawn knew Mom would make all sorts of disapproval faces at how much it probably cost, but she also knew even Mom would say it was worth it when Buffy got the ice to herself for an hour. Everyone else was done after the first thirty minutes. Sure, it was nice not to worry about knocking into anyone and be able to go as fast as you wanted, but it was nicer to see Buffy all alone out on the ice.

Buffy was good enough she made it look easy. She glided, and jumped, and spun around like a ballet dancer, and Dawn stopped watching Buffy’s moves and started watching _how_ her sister moved. How she looked relaxed and focused and not distracted by anything. The way she held her hands out when she’d do a little spin. Her smile, when it finally came, and how it stayed on her face.

The only frowny part of the whole thing was when Jeanine said Buffy was really good, maybe almost professional good, and Dad said she _had_ been, that she had a couple of trophies for actual newspaper-news competitions in Mom’s basement. His voice went big as he talked, big and proud, even as he said how it was a shame Buffy had given it up but it’d been Buffy’s choice _to _give it up.__

__“It wasn’t just Buffy’s decision,” Dawn said, just loud enough for her to hear herself say the words, and went back to watching her sister. The frowny stuff went away after just a little bit of seeing Buffy dance on the ice and didn’t even come back when they kissed Dad good-bye at the train station._ _

__Spike and Dru weren’t with Mom when she picked them up in Sunnydale, which made Dawn feel silly about expecting them to be there. They were happy to see her when she and Buffy got home, at least. Not racing-through-the-house happy, but smiling-and-meaning-it happy. Okay, Spike smiled. Dru just looked at them._ _

__“You had a good time at your papa’s, then?” he asked, before they even got their suitcases upstairs._ _

__“Plenty good,” Buffy said. “Quality paternal attention, future stepparent bonding sessions. I’ll tell you guys all about it when we get settled back in.”_ _

__“I hear there was some shopping involved.”_ _

__“Yeah, we got – oh, you mean _shopping_. I’m getting what you’re going for. Yeah, we got the goods, but we’ll need a few minutes to unpack, and then –”_ _

__“I don’t understand all this,” Dru said, looking at Spike._ _

__“Understand what, pet?”_ _

__“I thought I knew you better but there’s no abiding anything now. We’ve old, fair rules on interlopers but here you are, happy to eat their false promises and swallow their words down. But there’ll be no having it from _me_. None of your spiders crawling through _my_ teeth.” She glared at Dawn. “You might not be right to be here but I know your ears work perfectly fine. You shouldn’t have been brought here, not with you fitting in so wrong here, anyone could see you’ve not been granted permission. Now you listen, you keep your distance, you measure the space and keep a fair –”_ _

__“Dru, it’s fine, it’s controlled circumstances here, you’ve nothing to worry about.”_ _

__“Worry’s not the point. Thought you’d understand that, of all the real people in the world it’d be you who most might.” She crossed her arms and turned away from everyone, and Spike jumped over to stand in front of her, putting his hands on her shoulders._ _

__“I do, love, I do. You know that, you know that perfectly like you know the path of the moon on the water, tell me you know I know, please tell me.” Dru gave an angry little whimper and nodded. “Tell me you know I’ll keep you safe.” She nodded again. “Then let me do that. Let’s take you someplace you’ll find safer than here. Come on.” He put his arm around her shoulder, pulled her away, and closed the basement door behind them. There weren’t any apologizing backward glances, no secret hand gestures to Mom to show they were doing fine and everything was under control. They were just out of there with everyone else shuffling around quietly and the suitcases still on the living room floor._ _

__“That sure was a fine how-do-you-do,” Buffy said, the first one of them to break the silence. “Probably the most threatening one I’ve had in a while, but hey, what’s life without a few threats to keep you sharp?”_ _

__“I’m sorry, I know I should have…” Mom rubbed her eyes and pinched at her nose. “Christ,” she said quietly, and Dawn couldn’t tell if she was more upset over Dru or for swearing in front of them for only the second time Dawn could remember._ _

__“Is everything okay here?” she asked, hating that she couldn’t make her voice be anything but small._ _

__Mom sighed, then pulled her shoulders back and began talking in a more usual tone of voice. “It’s been fine. Most of the time, it’s just that sometimes Drusilla’s been in a little…if I thought she was at all dangerous to herself you know I’d –”_ _

__“We do, Mom,” Buffy told her. “They give us any trouble and they’re splitsville.”_ _

__“Something like that.” Bad jokes were a relief after what just went down. So was cocoa, made fresh on the stove. The suitcases could wait, and Dawn had her hands wrapped around a giant mug and was feeling better when she jumped at the knock. But it was just Spike knocking on the basement door before he opened it just in case anyone was standing there so they wouldn’t get knocked into. It was nice of him. Polite, even. Thinking of other people before he did things, and there’d been a couple of times Dawn had been in the living room and knew for a fact nobody was in the kitchen and he’d knocked anyway. He closed the door behind him again and looked around, then asked, “So you said you’d done some shopping?”_ _

__“Is she okay?” Dawn asked before anyone could give an answer and move the conversation away from what just happened._ _

__“Dru? Yeah. I don’t even mean _considering_ , I mean she’s fine. It’s been hard for her these last few weeks, but she’s not getting so far gone she can’t be brought back or diverted off.”_ _

__“She’s been like this for two weeks?” Buffy whipped her head around to look to Mom, her voice high like she was ready to shout and swear _I’m fine leave me alone_. “I know we talked to each other in that given time frame, I can’t remember everything I said but they _definitely_ came up in conversation and something like this seems worth mentioning.”_ _

__“No, it’s not.” Everyone turned to look at Spike, who was looking at all of them like they were telling jokes without punchlines and making no sense whatsoever. Like they didn’t know what they were talking about. “This is just how Dru gets in wintertime. Even for what passes for wintertime here. It gets chilly, cold, nights get long, she leaves the world. The days start to get longer, she comes back. She’s not as here as she might be in a given June, but this isn’t anything to be writing home about. Or calling, case may be.”_ _

__“So I’m not supposed to worry?” Dawn asked._ _

__“Worry about what? About Dru? Not right now, no, not so much. She might not know who you are for a while, but she’ll come back and start remembering you in no time.”_ _

__“Right. Sure,” Dawn said. She pushed her cocoa away, slid off the stool, picked up her suitcase and carried it upstairs. Nobody came after her to knock on her door. That was fine. She didn’t want to see anybody anyways. If she’d been able to talk to Spike once, just _one lousy time_ , she’d have known what Dru was doing and would’ve been ready to see it when she got back. If Mom didn’t want them to pretend Spike and Dru didn’t exist, Dawn might’ve been able to ask what was happening at home and get a real answer. _ _

__Hours later, at dinner, Mom apologized for not wanting them to worry: “I wanted you to enjoy your time with your father as much as you could.” She’d cooked them dinner, and Dawn was trying not to enjoy the lasagna. “I knew if I told you everything that was happening, you’d get upset, and preoccupied, and you wouldn’t be able to do anything about it so I thought, why not leave the Sunnydale horrors here until you got back?”_ _

__“Because you shouldn’t have done that,” Buffy said. Mom’s face made Dawn feel like she’d jumped into the ocean in January but Buffy didn’t stop. “Maybe I couldn’t have done anything about it but we should’ve known, so we’d be ready when we got back. Mom, Sunnydale horrors are my life. I can’t pretend they go away when I’m not here.”_ _

__“Buffy, you know –”_ _

__“Yes, I do. I understand. I know what you wanted. I don’t have to like it or agree with it but you’re the parent so what you say goes so why don’t I just go to my room without dinner for mouthing off at you.” This was a Mom-And-Buffy Conversation, not a Summers Family Conversation, and as much as Dawn wanted to jump up and scream _they’re my life too_ she stayed quiet, chewing as silently as she could so she could get out of there faster. Pretending _never_ made anything go away._ _

__“You’ll stay right here, you’ll finish your dinner, and when we’re done we’ll have a good long talk about our guests but for now, please, _just_ for now, let’s have dinner together.”_ _

__“Fine.”_ _

__“All right?”_ _

__“I said fine, Mom. It’s a good dinner. I’m not being sarcastic. It’s good.”_ _

__“Yeah,” Dawn finally felt she could add something without shouting. “The olives are really nice.”_ _

__“Thank you.” Mom closed her eyes for a moment. “But we’ll talk later.”_ _

__“Looking forward to it,” Buffy said._ _

__Dawn almost said something about wanting to talk to Mom too, but decided to save it for her journal. Stuff about wanting to talk to Mom privately like Buffy did so much these days, knowing _why_ Buffy needed that and feeling bad for her sister being sick, and not being allowed to feel angry about anything even if she really hated how it was happening. Writing stuff down always helped her feel better. It never fixed what was wrong, but it made it easier to not shout at Mom for no reason the next morning at breakfast._ _


	6. though my love is great

“It’s not like her being sick’s a _surprise_ or anything.” Dawn moved her second rook up three squares. She’d stayed behind at Willow’s while Buffy and Xander were out picking the right video to rent for the evening. “She might’ve warned us she wouldn’t recognize us when we get in the door. We could’ve at least gotten some warning.”

“Maybe your mom didn’t think she was doing that bad.” Willow considered the board, then slid a bishop over. “Drusilla being delusional doesn’t mean she wouldn’t still recognize you.”

“I get that. I get that it’s Mom being a mom, and her wanting us to have a good time with our dad since we don’t see him that much, and it’s still – still…”

“Like she doesn’t trust you?”

“Yeah. Like we can’t be trusted to know these things.” Dawn couldn’t even mind when Willow captured one of her last pawns, she’d said it just right. “It’s just how they’re doing down in the basement while they fold laundry. They live with us, she should let us know this stuff. It’s not like I don’t know how to live with crazy people or sick people. It’s not like I haven’t seen – um.”

“Haven’t seen what?”

“Um.” Okay, she hadn’t said anything, she hadn’t named any specific things, she hadn’t gone past where she couldn’t come back from. She didn’t have to go the rest of the way there. Divert, pivot, spin, turn, deflect: “When Mom and Dad were going through the divorce. They wouldn’t tell us how bad things were. But they were pretty bad. The whole putting on a good face for the kids thing? It doesn’t work. The kids know stuff. We pick up on it fast. It’d have gone a lot better if they’d just included me and Buffy in things from the beginning.”

“Yeah, Buffy talked to me a bit about how bad it was before you guys moved here. I think what she said is it was a relief to leave everything back there.” Dawn’s king was in check, and she could see at least three ways out of it but she wasn’t feeling up to more defensive maneuvers right now. She picked the piece up off the board and handed it to Willow instead. “And your dad moving too, I can’t think how hard it must be, and…I’m not saying your mom’s right for not telling you. I’m just saying maybe she had both understandable _and_ angering motivations.”

“Both at the same time. That’s Mom for you.” Willow gathered up the rest of the pieces and Dawn asked, “So what did Buffy tell you? About what we left in Los Angeles.”

Willow looked up at Dawn, her face scrunched up in thought. “The Buffy rumors hit middle school too?”

“I don’t know.” They hadn’t. She’d know if they had. “What rumors?”

“The, you know, the…I know it’s rude to say but it’s just the word they use, the…no, I can’t say it. Okay, the _promiscuous_ rumors, that she was, ah, ready and willing for anyone. I swear I don’t really pay attention and I know your sister and I know it’s all bunk, but that’s one of the big ones and there’s another about her getting in some sort of trouble at school for doing something crazy, and the crazy thing’s different every time someone talks about it. She ran topless through the school, or she attacked a teacher. They don’t talk about her at your school, do they?”

“I don’t think anyone at my school knows enough about her to share any rumors. What our brothers and sisters do doesn’t always come up.”

“Right. Living with siblings. Things I can’t know from personal experience.”

“It’s not that bad.” She rubbed the back of her neck with both hands. “Does Buffy know all the rumors about her?”

“We’ve got a running tally of the craziest ones.”

“I’d like to read that sometime,” Dawn laughed. “But…has Buffy talked to you about how bad it got before we moved here?”

“A – a bit. Some. I know she wasn’t exactly unhappy to move. She said she was happy to get a fresh start and she wasn’t just repeating what your parents said to her. I don’t really know all the details.” Willow glanced away from Dawn for a moment, which was how Dawn knew Buffy had shared details with her friends. Enough details that her friends wanted to be careful about sharing them back to someone, even if that anyone was the first person who’d found out the full, whole truth of things. “I know she…I know she _really_ tried to hurt herself, and I know that because she told me, not because I heard anyone say anything. I _promise_ nobody’s said anything about that.”

“Oh.”

“Xander said if he did, he’d tell them they got it all wrong and what really happened was she tried to burn down the school gym and had to be committed for arson.”

“That’s nice of him.”

“Yeah, he’s a good friend that way.”

Heck with it, she might as well say it: “I’m glad Buffy’s got friends like you.”

“We’re your friends too, you know.”

“It’s not really the same.”

“Yeah. But a friend of one Summers is a friend to them all.” Willow grinned, and Dawn smiled back. Then Buffy and Xander got back with pizza and a movie Xander had picked that Dawn knew Mom wouldn’t let her see in a million years, but she couldn’t get why, not after she’d sat down and watched it. 

“I don’t know why she didn’t want me to see it,” she said. “I guess…”

“Yeah?” Spike asked, not looking up from scrubbing the bowl of the upstairs toilet. Anyone else not even facing her general direction wouldn’t be paying attention, but Dawn knew Spike was different.

“I guess it was pretty violent. A lot of guns and stuff. The part at the end with the bomb and melting and screaming was pretty scary. When the T-1000 stabbed a guy in the eye, that was _kind_ of gross, but you couldn’t see anything squish. I think she just didn’t want me seeing all the gun stuff.” She sat down on the side of the bathtub. “Xander rented it. I bet Buffy could get it if you wanted to watch it.”

“Yeah, if you put it on we’d give it a try.”

“Are either of you scared of bombs? They had a pretty scary big bomb scene.”

“You and your sis both saw it, you could tell us when to look away.”

“I could do that.” She could probably watch it again, too, if she did it at home with adults in the room and pretended like she’d never seen it before.

Even if Spike and Dru weren’t really grown-ups like Mom and Dad or any of her teachers, they were still sort of adults. They were old enough for her to sort of think of them that way. Definitely old enough that Mom wouldn’t want her hanging out with them while they cleaned the house. She wouldn’t say it out loud, but Dawn knew she thought that. Dawn could tell from the way she kept asking about her making friends at school, if she wanted to join the local Campfire Girls or take up an after-school sport. These days, Mom spent a lot of time thinking about her daughters making peer-appropriate relationships and all the therapy gunk she hadn’t worried about when they’d lived in Los Angeles.

Dawn knew Mom didn’t need to worry about it now, either. If there was anything she was good at, it was making friends. Maybe she hadn’t made the same sort of intense friends Buffy had right now with Xander and Willow, but she’d be in junior high soon – Sunnydale ran seven-eight-nine as junior high and ten-eleven-twelve as high school, probably because it was a college town – and she’d get to meet people who hadn’t been in the same classroom as everyone around them every year for the past few years of their lives. Pretty much nothing was harder to break into than an established grade school classroom. She could jump rope or play four-square all she wanted at recess and everyone went to everyone’s birthday party as a given democratic social convention, but once the bell rang, that was it.

Back in Los Angeles, she’d made friends with people in higher grades, lower grades, kids she’d randomly run into at public playgrounds for five minutes or the same ones she’d see every week at the same time no matter how much younger or older they were. It was what she did, and what Buffy used to do. Buffy had been friends with _everyone_ at her school back in LA. In Sunnydale she only had a couple of friends.

But Buffy’s friends in Sunnydale knew she’d tried to – tried to hurt herself. They knew her better than anyone she’d ever been friends with in LA. It was like Buffy put the same amount of friendship into just a couple of people instead of spreading it all out over the whole school.

Dawn hoped it was working out better for her this way.

-

Buffy’s birthday wasn’t something she looked forward to anymore. She anticipated it, sure, and she was glad when it happened because having a birthday beat the alternative. She just didn’t look forward to the day itself. Her first birthday in Sunnydale had been only slightly more than nothing, the three of them going out to a nice enough Italian restaurant and sharing tiramisu and everyone getting espressos. That was how she’d known Mom was really indulging the day: Dawn got her first honest taste of coffee. It was only decaf, but still. She’d swallowed the whole thing down without even any sugar or milk, the crazy anchovy-eater, and the staff had applauded her for her grown-up taste buds, moving Buffy out of the main focus. Which she’d been glad for. When they got home afterwards, she’d unwrapped her presents of books and CDs and a couple of novelty pairs of socks, and gotten a promise to talk about driving again in a year.

“I could practice in the cemetery,” she said when the morning came. “Xander and Willow say all the Sunnydale kids practice there.”

“We only have the one car,” Mom said. “I don’t know what the insurance would have to say about you using it to practice in, but I’ll look into it.”

“Perfect. Looking in’s all I want. I understand wholly and completely if the finances of the situation are such that it’d be unwise to venture further into this particular undertaking.”

“You practice that?” Dawn asked, taking another bite of they’re-for-everyone-so-share breakfast pancakes.

“No,” Buffy lied. Spike hadn’t helped her practice or offer vocabulary suggestions, either.

Cordelia threw her a bit of a party, cupcakes and pizza and bottles of Martinelli’s, the same as she did for everyone on the squad – no big fuss because it was Buffy, just enough fuss because it was someone on the team. Giles had run the morning to the bone so they could take the hour to talk, just talk, and eat real English biscuits and drink real English tea in his office. There were gifts from her friends and a call from Dad, and it was all in all pretty fun. Her birthday was just one day out of the year.

Reviewing her mental health with a professional happened about four times a year, and it just so happened that the way things shook out between professional referrals from Los Angeles to Sunnydale and scheduling around classes and meets and the whole unpleasantness-caused procrastination, that it was only after her birthday – _barely_ after, two days – she could take the afternoon to walk through the little parking lot, into the waiting room, and sit herself down to wait.

Probably the nicest thing about doing it in Sunnydale was that it happened in a person-sized building. It was a business building, with offices and a parking lot and a little break room somewhere, not a set of offices in a hospital or some big glass tower. Because it was in Sunnydale, it was three blocks over from houses that people lived in, and she could go on her own without needing someone to drive her. Now when she went to see her doctor about how things were doing and if anything needed changing or modifying, she went alone to a two-story building that looked like it was made for people and didn’t even have to wait long before she got to walk through a door to sit on what she always had to admit was a very nice couch.

Dr. Lin waited until Buffy was comfortable before she started talking. Nothing big, nothing heavy or weighty, all for letting Buffy decide what was important. She knew it was her doctor letting her patient get comfortable. She still didn’t mind. It wasn’t like in the movies where she had to fight to get the upper hand in a conversation. She just didn’t want to be here. Very different beast of another color, not wanting to be there. She knew she had to be. She just didn’t _want_ to be.

So she put her game face on, stayed honest, tried to keep the spigot open, and explained that her medication was doing its job and she was fine and it didn’t need tweaking this quarter and there wasn’t much of anything in her recent mental health history that needed reporting. Just a lot of ordinary high school teenage stuff.

“The last time we spoke you brought up the subject of dating.”

“Dating? Yes, I brought it up, and bring it up’s all I’m going to do. Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to get _back_ to it. Or start it, depending on how you measure how I used to have relationships, if you want to call them that – but I don’t think this year. Not the rest of it.”

“All right. I ask mostly because you sounded very hopeful about it. The prospect seemed to excite you.”

“The prospect of it does. The reality, I don’t know about that. I mean, if I want to fuck a guy, I can get that, I can get that easy. It’s not sex this time. It wouldn’t be, if I did it the way normal people date. And this isn’t about the divorce, it’s really not, it’s just me not knowing how I’d even fit dating into everything. I know if it’s important you find the time, but I’m picturing my weekly schedule, and I can’t see where dating would fit or how things could fit around that. But it’d be such…it’s such a normal thing. Just being with a person because you both like each other.”

“If it’s any comfort, that’s a universal fear shared among the ill and healthy alike.”

“It is. Thanks.” She smoothed her jeans down, looked out the window at the empty willow branches swaying in the afternoon light. “You know Spike and Drusilla?”

“We’ve discussed them before. I take it they’re still living in the house?”

“Yeah.” She looked around the room at the framed art, at the bookcases, at the little sandbox on Dr. Lin’s desk, at her shoes, everywhere but Dr. Lin herself. “They don’t have anywhere else to go, except out of town or maybe back to the factory, so. Go Mom for being patient with them. It’s that they’re together. I mean, really together. Really pretty amazingly together, Spike said something like fifteen years last September. Dawn’s eleven. They’ve been together longer than my sister’s been alive. How does that work? I get them being lucky and finding each other when they were both looking for someone to find them, but it’s still – Mom and Dad were married for something like twenty years and were together a couple years before that, and don’t start me on the internalized feelings of blame, let me finish this, this which is me wondering how come they managed to find each other and stay with each other and I know they’re both crazier than I am. Sicker, sorry, sicker than I am. Except Spike keeps saying he’s just crazy. He’s something, all right, but, anyway. Dru told me she got her schizophrenia diagnosis when she was nineteen, which – that’s typical, right?”

“Reasonably ordinary, as that illness goes.”

“Right. But the point I want to make, to sum all that up, is that I know if they can manage, if the two crazy people in the basement can manage with each other, I should be able to at least try managing it with a healthy guy for a few dates.” She looked back to Dr. Lin. “I’d really like to. I’d like to find out what it’s like. All that normal person stuff I can’t figure out.”

“I’m sure there’s no need for me to get into the details of the hard work, dedication, and good fortune necessary to have a relationship of the type you’re describing.”

“Even a fling would be nice. No, not a fling, I’ve _been_ a fling, it’s not as fun as it sounds. Squeeze. Crush. Pash. Experiment? It wouldn’t have to _mean_ anything. It’d just have to exist for a while.”

Dr. Lin cleared her throat the way she did when she wanted to clear a path for diplomatic and doctor-type words. “If this is something you feel strongly enough about to want to discuss it, you know my offer for a referral remains on the table.”

“Yeah, I do. And I’ll always be saying thank you for that. If I need it, I’ll ask. I trust you to find me someone good. But I don’t think this is a week-to-week or month-to-month type thing I want to talk about. I think it’s more – if I want to talk about it that much I’ll find a friend to listen, not a doctor.”

“Which I understand and support you on.”

“Maintaining good peer networking and seeking out appropriate social relationships.”

“And other words to that effect.”

“Thanks.” Buffy pulled a cushion up under her arm. “Is that all?”

“There’s still a few minutes left to our session, but if there’s nothing else you wish to discuss, then yes, it is.”

“Okay.” She set the cushion back where she’d found it and put her hands back on her knees. “I’d just like to get in some quality sitting right now, if that’s okay.”

Dr. Lin didn’t smile, but she shifted in her chair, leaned back, and nodded. Buffy didn’t smile in return and let her mind drift to think about nothing much on anything while she watched the willows for the last few minutes of the session. When it was up, while she got her stuff together, she said, “See you in April.”

“I’ll see you then.”


	7. take tears and memories and ask it, on trial

Fifth grade was one of the last years Dawn knew she could get a big birthday party. She didn’t go in for one. She could’ve, but didn’t see the point. What she got was a promise from Dad for a _good_ sushi dinner just the two of them next time she was in San Diego, a Mom-sponsored burger-and-milkshake outing with school friends like Janice and a few others, and gifts here and there from people that knew to give them. Not what she’d dreamed of, her last birthday before teenagerhood, but something that fit into her life. Maybe for when she turned thirteen, for a birthday everyone knew meant something, something bigger would fit then. But for twelve, what she got was fine. At least the birthday presents had been nice – journals, books, a flashy set of pens from Willow and a handmade box for her journals from Xander. She’d told Spike and Dru they didn’t need to get her anything, and they hadn’t, but she’d found some still-in-the-plastic-wrap nail polish tucked into her laundry between her t-shirts and pajamas when she’d been putting everything away.

Buffy got her a necklace-and-earring set that Dawn wore the next time Buffy’s friends came over. She couldn’t be sure that was what pushed Buffy to allow her to hang out with them, but she was pretty sure it’d helped.

“Not really. It’s more like Jewish Mardi Gras,” Willow explained to Cordelia as Dawn nibbled the edges off a triangle cookie. Between Willow’s holiday cookies and Buffy’s British tea, it was almost as much of a party as Dawn’s burger outing. “There’s costumes and sweet things and sharing little goodie bags, but it’s a holiday celebrating triumph over evil in the world, and it’s a major feast that comes before a period of self-reflection and abnegation. So, no, not really like Halloween.”

“As long as there’s goodie bags I’m all for it,” Buffy said. “Like with that tree birthday party a few weeks ago.” They were all sitting on the back porch, Dawn doing her best to be quiet and not get chased back into the house by Cordelia and her eyebrows. She looked like she got them done by a professional and not just a steady hand in front of the mirror, and the expression on her face when Dawn walked in said she only tolerated her on account of her being the host’s younger sibling and would only keep tolerating her as long as she kept sitting quietly on the far end of the couch or on the floor. Dawn didn’t mind; she’d get up and leave when she finished her cookies or the conversation moved onto high school stuff, whichever happened first. The big part was that Buffy hadn’t asked her to leave, which was a good enough reason to want to stick around for a while.

She knew there were a lot of things Buffy didn’t want to include her on. Her sister worked hard on keeping all the parts of her life separate and making sure there was a different version of herself in each one. Letting Dawn sit with her friends and not talk was a big step towards pulling at least two of those places together. Admitting she had a little sister, for one thing.

Dawn had spent about five seconds total wondering why Xander and Cordelia were dating. Then she scooted back to rest against the porch railing and took in how Xander had good hair, good jokes, and good shoulders, and Cordelia would be the first female President if she wanted and a movie star if she didn’t. She couldn’t blame either of them for wanting to date the other. From what she could piece together from conversations she wasn’t supposed to hear and questions Buffy hated her asking, even though they’d been in the same grade, same schools, and sometimes same classes for years it’d been both of them being close friends with Buffy that got them to start talking to each other.

If either one of them was over by themselves Dawn could talk to them, but not if both of them came over together. At least Oz was being about as quiet as her. Which helped her feel a little better, especially when he passed her the cookie plate without her even needing to ask. She drank her tea and cracked poppyseeds between her teeth and listened to her sister and her friends ignore her. It didn’t bother her, it really didn’t, not when she could put it all down in her journal that night. 

“I guess what I want is friends at school,” she said a couple of days later as Dru shuffled the Tarot cards. “I mean, friends like I had back in LA. The ones I’ve got here are fine, they’re my age and we like the same stuff and we like each other, but…talking to them’s hard, sometimes. I don’t know how else to say it.” Not to anyone but her journal, at least. “I want some sort of advice on how to do that. How to get to the next level of friends. People I can really talk to about anything. Is that a thing they can do? Can they tell me that?”

“Not with those precise words. They’ll let you get a good look inside yourself, see if there’s anything lacking or in need of repairs, where things are moving as they need to be and where they’re not. When you know what you’re worrying over, they’ll help you get your hands around it.”

“Okay.” She loved watching Dru give her a reading. She definitely got a lot more focused. Even when she was still kind of off-step from the real world and didn’t think everyone was who they said they were, reading the Tarot cards could at least get her to point her attention at something and not just spin around inside her head.

Dawn loved that it wasn’t ever a generic newspaper horoscope reading, either – _you’re frustrated when people are rude to you_ and that stuff. Dru’s cards said Dawn’s problems probably wouldn’t be changing for a while, that she wasn’t fighting the rest of the world so much as she was fighting herself and what she was supposed to be listening to, and that even though she had to keep moving forward and even if that hurt, she had to be understanding to the people around her who weren’t quite so capable of that. Because some of the cards were upside-down, that meant Dawn had to do a lot of work to accept how things were going. Which was completely true and something she needed to work at with school and home and everywhere else but hadn’t really put into words yet. Even in her journal.

Maybe the whole thing was a bunch of mystical mumbo-jumbo. She still liked the ritual involved, and when it was done, she felt good enough to want to head for a bike ride to enjoy being out and moving. Even if the day was gray and overcast and not really springtime yet. It was on its way, but it’d be another couple of weeks before it really arrived. So even though people were out with their kids and their dogs, the park with the big wooden playground wasn’t all that crowded. Dawn parked her bike at a free spot on the rack, looped her helmet straps through the lock to keep it safe, and headed straight to the swings. She’d seen Spike and Dru here before, with Spike the one on the swing shouting at Dru to push harder, really leaning forward and back in the seat to get even more momentum going. Neither of them cared about what people thought was socially appropriate. Sure, they were both crazy, but that didn’t mean they didn’t _know_. They’d moved beyond that. It was something Dawn knew she couldn’t ever do. No matter how much soul-searching she did.

What she could do was kick against the ground and get herself swinging gently and try to focus on just moving in the air. A couple of little kids started climbing up the side of the castle to get onto the slide from the outside, and she slowed down to watch them go. The other playground kids she’d played with in LA had done stuff like that – really going at the world while parents hung around nearby. She’d liked how the boys let her climb up with them, never saying she couldn’t, and how they liked she hadn’t been afraid of anything. One boy, mostly, one of the foster kids that sometimes came in a big group together. Even though he’d been a little younger than her, she’d really liked him. She liked to think he’d liked her, too, all his soft brown hair and pretty blue eyes. When she thought about him these days, she mostly thought about how she didn’t have any way to find out where he was, or what had happened to him. All she had was a name and a park he used to hang out in. Maybe a private noir movie detective could make something from that, but she was just a fifth-grader, so she just wondered while she rode the swings and thought about the new friends she hoped she’d meet soon.

-

It still gave Joyce pause, sometimes, when she took the time to consider the extent of the basement guests. Just a year ago, when the girls were off to their father’s Joyce was left alone in the house. She’d thought of it as a preview of what she’d feel when Dawn went to college. Something to prepare her for that eventuality. Now she knew that wouldn’t _exactly_ be the case when she sent her daughters off at the train station. Joyce might have periods of being _by herself_ on Revello Drive, but she wasn’t going to be alone in the house when her daughters were gone.

There was something about watching Drusilla and Spike, the way they’d laugh with each other and very casually lived within each other’s space, that held her off from asking when they might be moving on. And if she was being honest with herself, or with someone from the gallery, she’d gotten used to having them around, both for the help and the company. Sometimes when it was just her in the house by herself, she’d go downstairs and in practiced parental circumvention, absolutely _not_ snoop or spy. Just take a look around without even touching anything that wasn’t hers. Some of the household supplies were down there anyway and the door didn’t have a lock. She’d knock, if she knew they were down there or wasn’t sure. _Provisional privacy_ wasn’t exactly the best, but it beat _conditional_. She’d look around as much as she could while she went to grab a bottle of something or another or check to make sure what she needed wasn’t down there, then maybe linger a bit before heading upstairs. What it was she was hoping to find – some solid, tangible sign of one thing or another that they were on their way out, that they’d gotten it into their heads to stay indefinitely – couldn’t quite make itself known to her to put into words yet. Just that she kept lingering, to look, and maybe she’d figure out how to say it to herself.

She worked to keep dinnertime conversation circumspect, asking them how they enjoyed Southern California, if they’d ever been here before coming to Sunnydale.

“Not this time around the world,” said Drusilla. “We’d been invited before, but never took the offer.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “A woman we’d been traveling with, she said she’d come from somewhere around here – this part of the world, this part of the country, very nearly this part of the state but even with all the happy memories she had of here she never wanted to come back. Not by herself, I think. Twice, it might have been, twice she said she’d bring us here if we wanted, but we didn’t. So she never did.”

“We lost touch with her. Some years back. She might’ve returned in the meantime, but we haven’t had a chance yet to look her up and see if she’s resettled here,” Spike said.

“She always was so fond of you,” Drusilla said to Spike, who huffed out a laugh. She made a happy noise and turned to Joyce, “You might well have liked knowing her. She was very much the mothering kind though she’d swear around the world she wasn’t. Something for you to talk about there.”

“I’ve known some women like that,” Joyce smiled. “Is there any way you could find her? I’m sure you could – I know the local library holds computer education classes, maybe there’s something there that you could use.” She’d been hoping for some sort of pleased surprise, maybe a remark on how that’d never occurred to either of them and it was a good idea and they were happy she’d suggested it to them. The surprise was there, but not pleasure: Spike very carefully nodding, his eyes going wide, Drusilla looking at Joyce with a particular care she didn’t think she appreciated.

Drusilla cleared her throat. “She wasn’t ever _our_ mummy –”

“I think we’ve made our peace with not knowing what’s become of her,” Spike cut in, locking eyes with Joyce and smiling. “We didn’t part on happy good-byes, I’ll put it as such, and it’s nice of you to make the offer, especially when we’ve not even got library cards, but for now, for the present, we’re not worrying about her. She was – all else can be said about her, she was resourceful. Strong. We’re not worried she’s fine, whatever may have happened to her since we saw her last. Again, thank you, but again, quite all right.”

“All right,” she said, and cleared the table just a few minutes after that. Later in the evening, she overheard what sounded as close to a fight between the two of them as she’d ever heard. If she was hearing muffled voices from the basement through the closed door, she knew they were shouting if she was getting even that much. She lingered at the door, not quite guiltless, as the shouting went on minute after minute, rising and falling like ocean waves. But for all the once-removed familiarity – for all that she knew what it felt like to be in a shouting match like that – it still didn’t remind her of the end with Hank.

She understood why it hadn’t the next morning. Spike was in the kitchen, helping Joyce brew the coffee and carefully arranging the cereal bowls. Drusilla came up a few minutes later, makeup and hair done perfectly. She touched him on the arm and whispered a hello-good-morning; he smiled and turned to give her a kiss.

Joyce knew Buffy still felt that she shouldered most of the blame. Family therapy, divorce counseling, two doctors in Los Angeles and Dr. Lin here in Sunnydale, and Buffy still felt that. It was hard to refute when, in the end, she’d been the last drop of water that made the vase overflow. But even if Buffy hadn’t almost – even if _events hadn’t happened as they did_ , Joyce could think around it that way, couldn’t think it flat-out just yet – even if events hadn’t happened as they did, her parents would have split up anyway. Maybe not right then, maybe she and Hank would’ve gritted their teeth and waited until Dawn was in college, but the divorce had been on its way for years. About the only good thing of it happening when it did was that they still loved each other enough to manage to part on fairly good terms.

“You wanted us to see to some weeding today?” Spike asked, barely looking up from his cereal.

“Oh. Sorry.” Joyce looked up from her coffee held tight in both hands. “I – yes, I did. I thought that with the rain we’ve been having, it’d be a little easier. I’ve got to meet with the contractors this Saturday so I was going to get to it next weekend, but –”

“Say no more,” he held up a hand. “Just let us know what needs getting rid of, and we’ll take care of it.”

“As much as we can manage,” Drusilla said.

“Of course.” Joyce nodded and took another sip of coffee, hoping it’d center herself in the universe. “If I stepped out of line last night, I’m sorry. I just know that if I could get in touch with someone I hadn’t seen in a long time and missed…” She deliberately trailed off, hoping they knew what the silence was supposed to carry.

“It’s all right,” Spike said, sounding like things were. “You couldn’t have known what we haven’t told you.”

“We appreciated you thinking of us,” Drusilla said. “You made a very generous offer of time and resources, though we’ll not be making use of it.”

“Oh, good. I mean – I was thinking about what you said last night, and you’re right that I would have liked to know her,” she said. “That Darla of yours sounded like a fascinating woman.”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Spike said.


	8. in this sensual world we’re just God’s awful toys

Dawn had done the Sunnydale-San Diego Amtrak trip enough times by now she knew how it went – where the stops were, how much time passed between them, how long it took to get to station where they made their transfer between train lines which always made Dawn feel so adultish, which underpasses had cool graffiti and which side of the train got the ocean views. After Dad and Jeanine kissed and hugged them good-bye and while Buffy loaded their luggage into the little baggage area, she went right up to the second level to pick out a good table on the correct side of the train and settle in with a fresh book. When the train pulled out of the station, she knew it’d be about six hours to home.

It was maybe an hour after leaving San Diego the train slid to a stop in the middle of nowhere. Really in the middle of nowhere, just past Oceanside. Dawn looked out the window, shrugged, and went back to reading. Sometimes the train stopped between stations because there was a car that couldn’t get off the road or because of an accident up the track or even just be bad signaling making traffic between passenger trains and heavy freight. She knew there was a reason they’d stopped, and they’d be off as soon as whatever got them to stop in the first place was taken care of. That was how it went for the first ten minutes. By then, there was usually some announcement a tow truck was coming, or as soon as the trains up ahead of them were going they’d be going too. But this time there wasn’t anything. Not for ten minutes, not for twenty.

Maybe it was something wrong with the train itself. Whatever the train equivalent was for spark plugs. They’d fix that soon and they’d be on their way – so maybe they were getting the train spark plugs out of the emergency kit repair kit in the locomotive or someone had to rush them from the Oceanside depot. It wasn’t something worth mentioning. Except Dawn was starting to seriously wonder. It wasn’t just her: she could hear people whispering quietly.

That was the moment she knew it was bad. If things were okay, people would be talking.

“Buffy, do you –”

“I’m sure it’s fine.” She didn’t look up from her history textbook. “Look, they haven’t kicked us off the train, so it’s probably not going to blow up or catch on fire. If it was something _really_ wrong then we wouldn’t be sitting here. So just – hunker, I guess, until we find out what’s happening. It’s just been what, twenty minutes?”

“Something like that. But, yeah. Okay. If it was dangerous we’d have gotten fire engines or vans picking us up. Not just waiting.” She squirmed and tried to settle down. “But how much longer do you think it’ll be?”

“I figure as long as it takes to deal with whatever’s got us stopped.”

“I know we’ll go when we’re ready to go, but I mean another ten? We’ll be moving in an hour?”

“Dawnie, it’s fine.” Now she put her book down onto the table to actually look at Dawn, meet her eyes and watch her face. “I don’t think we…” She kept looking at Dawn. Then something happened Dawn couldn’t understand, Buffy sitting up straight and scooting out from her seat. “Okay. I’ll be right back. You wait right here and hold down the fort.” Before Dawn could ask her where else she might wait, Buffy was off to the front of the train, walking past everyone who’d gotten up from their seats and were wandering around, leaving Dawn alone to wonder what her sister was going to do, then try to read, and finally just lean up against the window and stare out at the view.

When Buffy finally got back, it was only thirty minutes since they’d stopped. People were talking normally again, and police cars had shown up, barreling down the military side of the highway. The worst part about seeing them was not being able to hear the sirens. Maybe if she’d heard the sirens it wouldn’t have been so bad. But at least now Buffy could tell her why they’d come.

“Okay, I talked to the guys up front. The train’s definitely not in danger of exploding, we don’t need to worry about some Keanu Reeves situation. We won’t be going anywhere _soon_ , but we’ll be moving as soon as it’s okay. They said…” She sighed. “It sucks there’s no good way to put this, but it’ll be in the newspaper tomorrow, probably the morning news, so, what the hey. They said they found someone on the tracks. Someone’s _body_ on the tracks. And it’s staying there, and we’re not moving, until they’ve done all the police work they can on it. Because if we’d kept going we’d have run it over and there wouldn’t be enough to figure out what happened. They’re going to figure out everything they can before they move it, like who it is and if someone put them there after they died for, well, whatever reason they died, that’s a whole different investigation, or if they were there because the last train to come through ran them over because they figured that’s a good way for them to kill themselves.”

“Oh,” Dawn said. There wasn’t much else _to_ say. “Thanks for finding out. And telling me.”

“I figured it’d be worse if we were sitting here and didn’t know why. At least now we know.”

“Yeah.” She looked out the window again, checked her watch, then took it off and put it in her backpack. “Okay.”

“They told me this happens ‘not all that often,’” she air quoted it, “but enough they know what to do. And they said it wouldn’t take all that long.”

“Did you ask how long all that long is?”

“They said it depends on the state of the person. It’s not something that’s happened enough they can give a timetable.”

“Right.” Dawn leaned forward on the table. “I guess we’ll be here a while.”

“Something like that.” They sat there and Dawn trying not to think about when they might be getting home to Sunnydale before Buffy said, “We should get some pretzels from the snack car before they’re all sold out.”

“Mom said that stuff’s way overpriced.”

“I’d rather have overpriced pretzels and ginger ale than not have anything.”

“Do they have red vines?”

“Let’s go see.”

They ended up with a more than respectable haul. Buffy pulled out the credit card Mom gave her for emergencies only, explaining that if anything in their family counted as an emergency, it was finding a body. The joke was so awful Dawn had to laugh at it. Back at their table, they spread it all out to take in the sight of everything: regular M&Ms, peanut M&Ms, regular pretzels, pretzel sticks, red vines, Snickers bars, ginger ale, bottled water, Diet Coke, trail mix, almonds, raisins, and a pack of Amtrak-branded playing cards. Buffy opened the cards before she went for any of the food, but Dawn started with trail mix.

It wasn’t that bad. Not worth the price, but not a complete rip-off. And Buffy was right, it did help. She washed it down with a still-cool ginger ale and looked out at the ocean. They always sat up on the top level of the trains because that meant they were high up enough to see the ocean, and there it was, doing its own ocean thing. That wasn’t news. The body must have been, because otherwise the news vans and reporter cars drove all this way for nothing. She couldn’t hear anything, but she could imagine vans honking to get people out of the way, reporters yelling to get the right makeup and lighting. Maybe cameramen yelling with the police about jurisdictions and other stuff they shouted on TV shows.

She and Buffy played poker for M&Ms, gin for pretzels, crazy eights for the last of the peanuts, and Texas hold-em for bragging rights. Dawn turned the pretzel sticks into math puzzles and Buffy made them into pyramids, using the last of the raisins as base supports. They collaborated on solitaire and Free Cell and opened up the Snickers after they’d been waiting three hours, when they should’ve been halfway to home and heading past the graffiti of the laughing cats.

“Right.” Buffy went back to her side of the table. “We’ve still got the nuts. You feeling snappy?”

“I was _born_ snappy.” Dawn managed to say it sharply, glaring at Buffy. Who glared back. So Dawn kept glaring. And Buffy didn’t look away. So Dawn leaned forward. Which had Buffy also lean forward. So Dawn pushed herself up onto the table. And Buffy put a fist down. Which made Dawn rest her chin in her hands. And Buffy leaned in close. With neither of them blinking even so much as one single time.

Dawn lost by giggling first, but that was fine because Buffy giggled back. They sat back down, Buffy went back to shuffling, and Dawn opened up one of the cokes.

“Do you think Mom’s at the station yet?”

“Probably not. It’ll be a while before we should be there by then.”

She knew the train had to move again at some point in the future, but when it happened it still was a surprise. There weren’t any announcements to let them know or any conductors walking around to report on the situation. It was just the train moving. Finally heading on back to home where her bed was waiting and where Mom was at the station. She wouldn’t have gone home, not even if they’d have told her it’d be six hours late. Maybe she’d walk two blocks to a nearby restaurant and eat dinner and then come back, but she wouldn’t just _leave_. It went against all the Mom rules.

Dawn put her watch back on, checked how long she’d been waiting, and made a note to tell people at school exactly how long bodies on the tracks delayed trains. Buffy wasn’t as concerned about how much time they’d been sitting there, even after Dawn told her down to the minute.

“It was almost kind of fun.” She began gathering up the playing cards. “Not something I’d want to do again, ever, but almost kind of fun.”

“Yeah.” Dawn looked out at the ocean. “Almost kind of.” The sun was about ready to set. They’d never gotten a sunset on the train before, going home too early or too late for one, and she almost told Buffy to start watching, except she turned and looked at Buffy, really _looked_ at her sister with the faint sun in her hair and on her face, shuffling the cards and putting the box away. Everything about her said she was done and ready to be home except for the one moment when she smiled at Dawn, but when she looked away she went all empty again.

“Hey,” Dawn said quietly. “Hey,” she said a little louder, and got Buffy’s attention. She smiled at her sister, and said, “Check out the sunset.”

“Mighty nice view up here,” Buffy said. Dawn curled into her seat, pulling her feet up underneath her as the train slid along the tracks. She glanced at Buffy every so often, at Buffy or her book or out the window. Every time she looked at Buffy, she was looking out the window.

It was night when they got home, really definitely night with all the streetlights on. Mom was there like Buffy said, ready to hug them and kiss them and say how glad she was they were home again. Buffy was ready to hug and kiss her right back, big face-wide-open cheerleader smiles.

“This is honestly the first good argument I could imagine either of you making for a cell phone,” Mom said after the kissing and hugging was all over. It was way too late for a real dinner at home but when snacks out of little bags were all they’d had for the last few hours, food on a plate sounded like pretty much the best thing in the world. Nobody wanted to walk more than three blocks so they stopped at the first restaurant they came to, someplace Dawn was pretty sure Spike and Dru would’ve call a _pub_ but Mom said was a _high-end dive_ that smelled a little like Spike’s cigarettes and a little like Janice’s dad’s compost bin with Dad’s beer breath thrown on top of everything. But they sat down at a table with chairs and Dawn got her burger and fries – fried mushrooms and extra pickles; extra salty and ketchup in a little metal cup on the side – in under twenty minutes, so everything was fine by her.

Buffy got a half-pounder, medium-rare, and extra-crispy fries with mustard. Mom got a beer. An actual, in a glass, wait-an-hour-before-driving beer that even Buffy goggled over her drinking. But it was probably nice to have beer at a time like this, when the bad news was all done and you wanted something to help move the day along. Maybe that was why Mom ordered one. Dawn couldn’t really blame her for that. When it came to giving that sort of help, beer probably worked pretty well.

“They’d turned on the news,” Mom said, after she finished the beer and moved onto lemonade. “It was absolutely surreal, seeing the train there on the screen and knowing you were both on it and having to keep waiting and still being able to see _where_ you were without being able to see either of you – I kept checking the windows to try to see if I could see you, but the screen was too small and the cameras were too far away. I just kept thinking, maybe I’ll get a glimpse. I knew you were probably all right, since it wasn’t anything with the train itself, just that body they found, and I knew it would’ve been worse if I couldn’t have seen the train at all. I couldn’t leave when it was stuck there. Until it started going again, I was stuck in that station.” She smiled. “It felt like a bad Beckett take-off.” 

“If I wasn’t so tired that’d be hilarious,” Buffy said. “But we were fine. We got snacks and played cards.”

“The cards and snacks were Buffy’s idea,” Dawn added. “She got me ginger ale, too.”

“I thought under the circumstances, we might as well go for it. And the cards are going to make a great souvenir of the time we got stopped on the train for umpteen hours because of a murder investigation. Maybe I’ll bring them along next time, in case something like this happens again.” Dawn giggled; only Buffy would make a joke like that.

The drive home was quiet, with the windows rolled down all the way to let the air blow through the car. Nobody said anything while they drove home and nobody said anything when they _got_ home. Good-nights and sleep-wells were enough. All Dawn wanted was a shower and to get into bed and try to get to tomorrow by sleeping through the rest of the night.

It wasn’t until she was out of the shower and brushing her teeth that Dawn realized that was the longest amount of time she’d just spent _with Buffy_ since probably ever. Maybe actually ever. She’d never babysat her for that long before Mom and Dad got home, and the hospital didn’t count as spending time together. But the train did. Stuck on the train for more hours than she wanted to think about, with her sister. Just with her sister. Nobody else around, not _with_ them, not really. There’d been other passengers around but it’d just been the two of them sitting across the table from each other and playing cards and eating candy snacks and laughing – it hadn’t happened for anything close to a good reason but it’d still happened. Just with her sister.

She closed the door to her room quietly and got into bed as carefully as she could.

Maybe it was because she’d stayed up so late, or maybe it was because of how scared and upset she’d been with not knowing what was happening on the train, but something made Dawn wake up early. Just after six, and it was unfair that she couldn’t fall back to sleep. It was way too early for anything that wasn’t catching an airplane. Dawn lay there, rolled over, lay there some more, then pushed her feet out of bed and wondered if the squirming, squiggly feeling low in her guts was what a hangover felt like.

She couldn’t hear anyone else in the house, not in the bedrooms, not the bathroom. Nobody was down in the kitchen. It wasn’t like waking up in the middle of the night and wandering around the house when it was dark and everything looked like it was the wrong size; this was her up and dressed for the day before everyone else. If she looked at the world just out of the corner of her eyes she was the only one around in the house. The only one around anywhere. Except for the paper boy, since the morning paper was already on the front porch. But besides him, it was just her.

She walked around to the back porch and listened to some birds singing and wondered if anyone else was the only one around, too. Buffy probably felt like this even when other people were around. When she got where stuff couldn’t get inside her. Sometimes she could pull herself right back to the world and sometimes she stayed there for days and days. She’d gotten herself out of there for Mom after they got home but she’d gone back and she was probably there right now. She’d been there on the train. Dawn had seen it and hadn’t known how to help her sister come back.

Her feet got wet from the dew and she wiped off her toes on her jeans before stepping back inside. The kitchen tiles were colder than before she’d gone outside and the basement door was closed.

She knew she should have knocked. That was the polite thing to do, what she was supposed to do. She hesitated, her fist in the air, and then just pushed it open and walked down the stairs into the basement. If they were asleep she’d leave. Watching people sleep was usually creepy but Dawn knew there were some exceptions. Like if someone woke up and rolled over and looked at their boyfriend or girlfriend sleeping there and thought how great they looked. Or parents checking on their baby. Things like that. She’d watched Buffy sleep in the hospital and that hadn’t been creepy. Checking to see if her friends were awake or not was completely okay for how these things went.

“Hey,” she said, not too loud. There was just enough light for Dawn to see the outline of bodies under the futon’s covers, and a little bit of movement happening there. “Are you guys awake?” She asked, a little louder. It could’ve just been them moving around during a big dream, making sounds from things happening in REM sleep. “Okay, I’ll just go.” As soon as she checked on them, like she’d wanted to. She stepped closer, moving carefully, bare feet on cold concrete and trying not to breathe too loud in case that woke them up.

“Dawn?” Spike lifted his head off the pillow. He didn’t really open his eyes. “Is something going on? Everything all right?”

“No, no, there isn’t anything.” she said, staying quiet. “I mean, I’m fine and, um…” She wanted to say she was sorry for waking them up, but he pushed the covers off and sat up, swinging his feet to the floor. He squinted at her, then shook his head and rubbed his eyes and groaned again.

“You’re all safe then? You’d been so late getting in, we’d started worrying down here.”

“No, really, Buffy and I are…”

Then Spike stood up out of bed and Dawn couldn’t think. Because Spike was completely. He was totally. There wasn’t anything. Spike was completely, he was totally, he was one hundred percent buck nothing all totally completely entirely _birthday suit_.

Dawn hadn’t known she could actually feel blood rushing into her cheeks or her eyes going wider and wider but that was definitely what was happening. And Spike was just standing there. Dawn stood there and couldn’t see anything but was seeing everything and she was all of a sudden all four years old again and seeing a glass of water fall out of her hands onto the kitchen floor and couldn’t move because because because –

“Then things went fairly decently last night?”

“Okay. Sure. Good. Right, righty-ho.” She nodded. He ran a hand over his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean, I mean I _am_ sorry, I just didn’t – okay, going upstairs now I’ll be going.”

“Wait, what? What’s all this now? You’ve got nothing to be sorry about.”

“No you really don’t I’ll be out I mean upstairs,” but she couldn’t move on the cold floor and couldn’t grab the glass and wasn’t even talking had to _had_ to look at Spike looking at her like _she_ was one of the house’s crazy people.

“You really feeling all right? You’re sure nothing’s wrong?”

“I’ll really be –”

_“William!”_

Dru’s shout rocketed through the basement. She was sitting up in bed, eyes wide, staring hard at Spike who stared back a moment before Dawn saw him just all-over flinch and shake and spin around and curl up and basically leap back into bed to grab the covers up over himself and stammer out swear words and profanity the whole way there. Swear words and profanity and apologies Dawn didn’t hear because Dru waved her hand at Dawn, gesturing for her to go away, and that broke the spell. The glass hit the floor and shattered. Dawn ran up the stairs to the kitchen and slammed the door behind her and ran to her room and closed _that_ door carefully and sat on the floor. Then she reached over to take a book off the shelf and stare at a sentence with some words in it to try not to think about how _she’d just seen Spike’s penis._

And everything else, what with him being naked and everything, but mostly his penis. She hadn’t gotten a good look at it, since it’d been kind of dark and she hadn’t tried to take in the details of it or anything, but that’s what it had been, all right. It wasn’t like she didn’t know what penises looked like; she’d read the puberty guides for boys when the librarians weren’t looking and a couple of them had color pictures and anatomical illustrations. Definitely a penis.

She flipped through _There’s Treasure Everywhere_ and _Lazy Sunday Book_ without actually seeing anything on the pages and waited until she was supposed to have gotten up. Then she opened her door a crack and went downstairs because she could smell Mom’s coffee coming down the hallway. It hurt, but didn’t surprise her, that Spike wasn’t already there in the kitchen. If it hadn’t been a school day she’d have waited around for him, or for Dru to take a message down, but she had to go to school instead. At least getting stopped because of a murder investigation was kind of something interesting to talk about, and maybe she hadn’t seen the body itself but she’d seen the police vans and news cars and playing it aloof was pretty fun.

But the thing about it, about seeing Spike’s own penis – besides it being what it had been, and everything – that made her head back to the library and the anatomical illustrations and stare at the ink on the page, not at even the letters, just the shape of the ink on the paper, was how for all the jokes she’d heard, all the pictures she’d stared at, having now seen one with her eyes in real life and everything…it’d looked kind of nice. Not like much of anything, not something worth making a big deal over – at least, not if she’d known it was coming. And it’d still looked kind of nice. Just a little thing. That’s all penises really were, anyway. Little things. Boy things. The boyest thing of all things.

When she got home, there was a full basket of laundry waiting for her right by her bedroom door. No stepping into the upstairs bedrooms for the house’s basement residents, not even to put away the clothes they’d washed. It wasn’t the most balanced thing Dawn could think of, the Summers family upstairs and Spike and Dru all down in the basement, but she didn’t know how to talk to Mom about it. After she put everything away and made sure they weren’t hiding somewhere, she knocked on the basement door again, and when they didn’t answer, almost went down because she had to put the empty basket away – then put it back in the hallway where she’d found it. There wasn’t much homework the first day at school after spring break, so she went out to the back porch to read a while, and went back out again after dinner to tackle her math with some fresh air.

It was pretty easy to avoid someone even when they were living in the same house, as long as they never came out of the basement while they were here and spent the rest of their time someplace else. Dawn was a champion avoider and could stay away from anyone, but this time, she wasn’t doing any sneaking around. She was putting herself out in plain sight if he wanted to come see her. It was the first warm night of the year, and a whole sheet of multifactorial algebra, and the sunset was just starting when Spike came around the side yard to sit down right next to her. He smelled like he’d just finished a cigarette. Dawn kept her eyes on her variables.

“I’m sorry if I caused you any upset.” That got her to look up at him. She could see it in his eyes how much he meant it. He wasn’t moving, just looking at her, and there was as much nothing on his face as there was apology in his voice. “If what I did goes against the rules of the house, we’ll clear out. If there’s a rule for that. I didn’t ask your mother when we came here and I should’ve known to ask, and I’m sorry my not being smart enough to ask led to what happened this morning. You want us gone, we’ll be out of here before tomorrow.”

“It’s fine, Spike. No, really.” He didn’t look away from her even as he tilted his head like he had to hear her better. She glanced at his rings and necklace and quickly went on, “You didn’t know, and there isn’t really a rule against specifically not wearing pajamas. I should’ve knocked. I’m the one who should be apologizing. I mean, you don’t come into _my_ room, I should’ve made sure you were awake before I went into yours.”

“Oh,” he said. She tried to smile. “You’re not upset.”

If she had a brother she might’ve already seen a penis by now. She didn’t, so she hadn’t, but the thrill of being aware that half the people around her had one had worn off by lunchtime.

“No, I’m not.”

“Oh,” he said again. He nodded, his eyes staying locked onto her face. Dawn couldn’t think why he’d put on makeup this morning. “And you’re all right.”

“Yeah. I’m honestly pretty okay. It was a surprise, and, okay, maybe not…but it’s really fine. You didn’t know I was coming down there, there’s no rule against not wearing pajamas, we can both say we’re sorry for different things to each other and keep going with things.”

“All right.”

She shook her head. “And it’s not like I haven’t had worse days, or like your penis is the most horrible thing I’ve ever had to deal with.” She laughed, and he laughed with her. “If you want to sit out here with me, that’s cool. If you want to smoke that’s fine too. It’s pretty breezy.”

“Sure. Ta.” There was the rustle of the coat pocket and the click of the lighter, and a moment later the bar-smell funk of cigarette smoke. She knew what that was like, now. It was almost relaxing and she was close to really understanding mitosis when Spike said, “So who found Buffy? You know, right after.”

“Wait, what?”

“I’d just been thinking, long as we're talking about horrible things – it’s not against some rule to talk about this, is it? I haven’t asked Buffy about it, but that’s on her shoulders, her right to discuss herself or not if she likes. I just figured after this morning, if I can’t be certain –”

“You need to tell me what we’re not supposed to talk about before I can tell you if we’re not allowed to talk about it.”

“Buffy trying to kill herself.” He must’ve taken Dawn’s squeaked-out _huh?_ as some sort of agreement, maybe that was one way they said yes in England, because he kept talking like they were having a conversation about something boring like bicycle helmets. “I figured, if it was your mum you’d be staying at your papa’s and if it was you then never mind what we’ve got in common, Buffy never would’ve gone and offered us that invitation or been able to talk your mum into this set-up we’ve got here. I’d thought it might be Buffy who’d tried something, and when Dru and I moved in, there wasn’t anything potent in the house, nothing to drink, nothing to take, no wine, no syrups, no pills, not even something meant only for children, and a woman’s house – three women on their menses in it with Dru here now – has _got_ to have something for that pain, not unless there’s good reason for it not to be around. Even went and asked your mum for something, just to be certain. So, all that with knowing Buffy herself, I figured, she might’ve tried ending things in a woman’s way. And she’s smart, she’d have finished what she’d started unless someone got to her before she’d gone.”

He wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was looking off to the edge of the yard, over the wooden fence at the neighbor’s giant oak. Spike took another drag and kept the smoke inside a little longer than he usually did before he let it out slowly, out and up so the smoke got a moment against the sunsetting sky when it could almost look pretty. “I’m not trying to make it seem I’m glad she wanted to die. I know that’s why I’m here now, and grateful as I am for good coming from such circumstances I’m sorry they had to happen to see this through. You seeing me all starkers doesn’t rank up close to that. I’m glad someone caught her, and I’m sorry whoever did had to.”

Dawn had called 911 before she called Mom. She was _glad_ she’d called 911 before Mom and couldn’t explain that to anyone, not even the doctor who talked to her after in the nice office with the dollhouse and the building blocks. She’d waited to call Mom because it was more time Buffy was alive for Mom. Mom didn’t need to know before 911 came to get Buffy. 911 needed to know right that millisecond. Mom could have a few more minutes where Buffy wasn’t almost dead.

It took her a minute to swallow out the dryness at the back of her throat. “Okay, how come you figured out all that, _all of that_ , nobody talking to you about it or anything, you just _figured it out_ but you can’t always tell when people are ready to say goodbye.”

“I already told you I’m insane.”

“Come on, Spike.”

He shrugged. “I always figured it was I didn’t have a soul.”

With Spike, sometimes Dawn had to ask to be sure: “Was that a joke?”

“No. Not really.” He let more smoke roll around in his lungs a while. “It was something I worked out myself, ages ago. I’d read it around, all over the places, eyes being windows to the soul and souls living in eyes and bits like that in every poem and story, and I remember going to the mirror, specifically going to the mirror because I had to check, and not finding it. Not that anything said what one bloody well _looked_ like, just that the eyes were where they were, and I thought that’s where I had to go to see them. If that’s where they were. And maybe it fit, that I couldn’t see it, if I didn’t know what to look for. 

“I asked my – I asked people, could they look in my eyes and tell me what they saw to make sure, and when they said they didn’t see anything, when everyone said there wasn’t anything there, it all made sense and it all fit. If I didn’t have a soul there wasn’t anything to be done about it. That’s why it hurt to look in other people’s eyes and for them to look into mine because I didn’t have one and everyone else around me did. If I didn’t have one then that was why I didn’t work as a person, why I couldn’t figure anyone or anything out. Nothing to be done about it. Just accept I didn’t have a soul and keep on going. I figured it wouldn’t matter, if I lived a decent life. Gave to charity, saved kittens and all that.” He laughed like he’d said something funny. “Took me ages to put together that people looked at eyes for things like pupil dilation, not immaterial metaphysical concepts, but it’s stayed with me. As good an explanation of myself as I’ve ever found. I haven’t got a soul, and that’s the why of everything.”

“Just how old were you when you decided this?”

“Please. I didn’t just _decide_ it. I figured it out.” He ground out the cigarette butt in the little ceramic ashtray. “I was eight.”

“Jeez, you really are crazy.”

“See, that’s what I’ve been saying this whole sodding time.”

It still wasn’t funny. There wasn’t anything funny. Dawn let herself laugh anyway. Because even now, with the body and the naked and all the crazy, it was still only the second most intense day of her life. She had something to compare this whole thing to, and that was the funniest thing in the world.


	9. find a dime under the bottom of the drain

When they’d knocked on her door late Monday evening to ask if the three of them could talk, Joyce was preoccupied with the upcoming inspection of the gallery’s septic system and how it might impact the planned expansion and didn’t think anything of the request. “Go ahead. What’s on your minds?”

“No, we’d – what we mean, we’d rather sit down and really have a conversation.”

“Oh. Well, I’ll probably have a few uninterrupted minutes Wednesday morning.” She’d wanted to finish the analysis on Sunday night, but the train delays had thrown a wrench into everyone’s lives.

“Eight or nine o’clock?” Drusilla asked, pulling Joyce out of her timetable and back into her bedroom. They’d stood just at the threshold, not even inside the doorway, Drusilla holding herself like she and Spike were scheduling a physical or representing an attorney billing by the hour.

“Eight should be fine,” Joyce said, and now they were all here, Joyce in the armchair, the two of them side-by-side on the couch. They were somewhat dressed up for the morning, too, Drusilla with her hair tied up and back and Spike in a long-sleeved shirt, sitting up straight and at attention.

“I want to make sure that we’ve thanked you for everything you’ve given us,” Spike said, with a gentle cadence to his clearly practiced words. “A safe place to sleep, food from your kitchen, all that you’ve shared with us, we’re thankful for it, every day we’re here. I also need to make sure you understand this isn’t –”

“Is something wrong?”

“No! God, no, we’re happy to be here, more than happy. It’s that – what I need you to understand, we –” 

He looked away, shaking his head and muttering too quiet for Joyce to make out. Drusilla put her hand on his knee, and he stilled and stopped, putting his hand over hers and squeezed before letting go and looking back at Joyce.

“I want to make sure you know this isn’t intended to cause any offense or slight. We wanted to sit down and talk because Drusilla and I have a request we’d like to ask of you. I understand if you’re not in a position to grant it, for whatever reason that might be, we’ll not be upset. But it’s something we need to ask just the same. We’ve been considering it for some time, and we think we’re finally in a place to act on it.”

“All right.”

Spike barely nodded, his eyes and voice steady. “We want to contribute to the household in a greater capacity and begin supporting ourselves and we need some more of your help to do that. Which isn’t the request. It’s the explanation for it. The request’s a bit more than that.”

“You want – okay. You both know I’m glad I’ve been able help you as much as I have.” She knew people who’d say she’d done enough already – she’d _married_ one, for God’s sake – by just giving them a place to live with reliable indoor plumbing, and anything more would be too much. That even inviting them in for this long without pressuring them to do more than laundry and chores was too indulgent, too parental. Maybe it was. She didn’t want to put too much time into puzzling that one out. But maybe they were right that they were only now at a point they could help out the way they were asking to. Trusting that sort of self-assessment was something she was actively trying to get better at when it came to Buffy. If she could do it with her daughter, she could try it here. “What are you specifically asking for help with?”

“References and recommendations,” Drusilla said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Doing what we’re doing for you, for others,” Spike explained. “We’d thought you’d know more people in Sunnydale who need housework done than your daughters would, and we’d hoped you might advertise our services to them. Such as they are. We’d thought once we had more than a single client as a personal reference, we could start to build on that.”

“You mean like gallery employees?”

“Or friends of yours with places what need cleaning. Laundry that needs folding and floors that need scrubbing. Four honest hands and two good backs between us, you know our work’s good. We wouldn’t start asking you to start paying us with money if this sees out. What we do here is proper payment for what’s already being given. But we’d be asking for money if we did this elsewhere.”

“Right.” Joyce tried to keep her face still. Last week Drusilla had been wandering through the streets all night, still rambling on about the delusion that’d compelled her to leave after Spike found her and brought her back to the house in the morning. Two weeks ago, Spike had apparently gotten into an ‘altercation’ at the Russell ampm with someone in the parking lot, or so she’d heard from Marcie, who hadn’t named names; Joyce asked Spike about it some days later and all he’d said through his split lip was _we’d had a misunderstanding_. “Well, I wouldn’t start asking you for rent in any case.” And those incidents were only the latest in a series, large and small, of just why –

“Mrs. Summers?” Spike tilted his head slightly. “Is there something wrong?”

“What? No.” She straightened up, lifted her head, squared her shoulders back. “No, I was just –” She pushed out a smile. Spike’s focused expression didn’t change. “I was thinking of who I know. A few of my friends already hire people to do what you’d be doing, but – I think I know a few people I might ask.”

“Oh, good,” he said, suddenly grinning at the _suggestion_ of the idea of good news, doing nothing at all to tamper down his feelings. “Thank you. Just for the asking, thank you. And – well, there’s a back-up, if nothing comes of this. We’ve a bit of dosh, not much, but enough we could print and set up some flyers around town. See if something might come of that if you don’t find anyone yourself.”

Joyce could name a half-dozen possible job options they could jump right into tomorrow that didn’t call for putting out flyers or asking around for references. Most of them didn’t require personal identification. “Let me ask around first.”

“Certainly,” Drusilla said, now smiling herself. Joyce felt like smiling back, but didn’t. Not yet.

“It might take a while. A couple of weeks – I’ll need time to ask around and see what people say.” Time to figure out the right sales pitch and gear herself up for making it and who to make it on. To get a committed answer one way or another and work her way through everyone she could ask. Starting with the ones who already knew about the people living in her basement.

Now she was back pouring Eunice fresh coffee in the gallery’s kitchenette, talking about Spike and Drusilla again. “That’s about the long and short of it,” she said, sitting down to join her. It was barely more than a walk-in closet tucked in behind the reception area between two offices, with room for a coffeepot, a fridge, three chairs and a folding table, and just enough space to hang around and talk a little while. If the café came in, they’d still have this as a private staff area. Which, as nice as it was to have an office with a door that closed, she was glad about. Sometimes a private space needed to be shared. “I know you said you were thinking of some sort of laundry service, and they’d be able to help with that.”

“They’ve been doing yours since October?”

“I haven’t lost a single sock since turning it over to them.”

“With an endorsement like _that_ , well now.”


	10. wrap her up in a package of light

Most days were fine. Not good, not wonderful, but fine. Some days were downright spectacular, or _brilliant_ , even. And some days Buffy would be all minding her own business, doing her homework or taking a shower, and she’d have the sudden, clear understanding that _if I killed myself I’d never have to shower again_.

By now she knew what to look out for, and little thoughts like that, as long as they stayed little and small and she could swat them away or drop-kick them into imaginary dumpsters, weren’t always signs of something bigger. Homework was unpleasant but she wanted to finish it because she knew Mrs. Van Muyden was a stickler for finishing everything, even if it wasn’t good, just as long as it was finished. She liked showering and loved her cucumber melon shower gel and there’d be another Bath & Body Works sale coming up soon and she’d be able to grab some more mini hand lotions and have a different scent for every purse. Specific things in the world she could hold onto and use to keep herself alive.

According to all her doctors, especially Dr. Lin, thoughts about killing herself were typical, given how bad her depression was and the fact that she’d already tried it once and almost managed it. As long as those thoughts didn’t _stay_ , she could keep swatting and drop-kicking them off. If they stayed, if they grew beyond little buzzing annoyances, then she knew she was going to be in for something. Coming after the train ride had been one of the worst times since moving to Sunnydale.

She had Zoloft and Bupropion for dealing with the normal, ordinary days of badness that were the regular days of her life. Two pills in the evening, taken right before she went to bed, safe in the top drawer of her bedside table unless she was traveling. If she was, they went in whatever carry-on bag or purse she kept with her at all times. Medication wasn’t a Rubik’s Cube but a balancing act as tricky to figure out as solving one of those things, and getting onto them had been as momentous as solving one – or crossing the river that almost had the same name. It’d taken a while to get here, to find something that kept working, testing out one medication, adding in another, lowering the dose of the second and replacing the first with something new, figuring out what were withdrawal symptoms from changing medications and what was her illness, try to find the most livable set of side-effects, medication tinkering and talk therapy over summer and into fall and skipping months of school to just work on getting better, but she was finally at a level of reasonable stability.

At least her depression didn’t come with anxiety along with it. Just being overwhelmed, figuratively and emotionally. When it came back to her, harder than she could talk herself through, she got pushed under the waves of the world. Just suddenly realizing she didn’t have any future to speak of, and she wasn’t present inside herself, and all she wanted was to not be anything at all. She was too far away, with too much gone, and nothing in the world could get far enough inside to reach what was left of her.

It didn’t happen for no reason. It happened because she had depression. That didn’t mean it didn’t suck, or that she wished there was some way to just end it that, well, didn’t involve ending herself.

Dawn always noticed first. Buffy knew Dawn had good reason for paying attention to her moods. Mom sometimes took a while. Spike, weirdly, was almost as good as Dawn. Buffy hadn’t yet gotten really low when she’d been at Dad’s, but she didn’t hold out a lot of hope for him ever noticing unless she hit actually-consider-writing-a-note bad. Willow and Xander, and sometimes Cordelia, didn’t always remember sometimes things just got bad in Buffyland, but they could deal with the fact that it was a thing that happened as long as she told them what was going on. 

Giles never noticed because he didn’t have to. She never felt like she had to pretend around him, so when she got to the library and he asked her how she was feeling, she told him she’d had better days, and when he asked her what she meant by that, she told him. Something about not wanting to bother the people right around her – not liking to make her passions into other people’s concern, like how the song went on one of Mom’s favorite albums – which was of course a classic depression symptom, check that one off the list, and if it came on she had to fight it like she was clawing her way out of Hell. Which she told Giles in about as many words.

“At least I’m being sick in a healthy way,” she said.

“Inasmuch as anyone can be. So – I’ve some cataloging to finish today, some new nonfiction, why don’t you come to the back and give me a hand with that?” 

“You’re trusting me with cataloging? When there’s so much shelf-reading left to do?” He’d had all his student assistants on it this week and they’d just only broken through to the 540s.

“It can wait another hour. Now, we’ve walked through the process a number of times and I’m sure you can recall all the steps. But if you’d like me to show you again?”

“Yeah. If it’s okay.”

It was, and he did, and after she adjusted the contrast of the green-and-black screen that was Sunnydale High’s cutting-edge digital inventory catalog, she worked through about half a cart’s new additions to the circulating collection by the time the class period ended. Way better than seeing if all the books were in exact precise order and place by looking at everything on the shelves one book at a time. Doing inventory like this meant sitting down in the back behind a closed door, and it also meant she could drink tea while she did it. In some way, Giles trusting her with access to his office cabinet was the biggest pick-me-up of the day. Which was why she made him a cup too.

It was one of those head-not-body-not-heart improvements. Buffy knew she’d eventually get back to herself. This was her connecting and being connected, taking charge of things to take care of herself, and her medication was definitely working because she was able to get up and go to school and help throw Michelle into the air during cheerleading practice instead of bouncing on her responsibilities and struggling to find something that’d penetrate deep inside in all sorts of ways – and if she was being _really_ honest, sometimes she missed just going out and fucking someone. She’d gotten pretty good at it. But that wasn’t important right now. Right now, this time, she wasn’t opting out of her life. Or opting into it, either. She was doing what she was supposed to without much thought or choice in the matter. She was participating. Enjoying things was bound to come back eventually.

The part of it that really sucked, beyond the anhedonia and the mental fatigue and the acute guilt of knowing this was all because she had an illness, was having to wait for the good feelings to come back. Because when she got bad – and Buffy knew from getting bad – whatever she could tell herself couldn’t dislodge or dismantle the knowledge that it’d never get better. That this trudging emptiness was all she had to look forward to for the rest of her life.

When she got a little better, not back to her new baseline but within spitting distance thereof, then she’d get pissed at herself for having to _wait_ to feel like herself. The whole thing about being grateful over getting healthy enough to feel pissed actually being an improvement on the big nothing was just about perfect for how it all worked out.

In the meantime, she got up, she went through her days, she did what she could and waited to feel angry at herself and on Thursday, when Willow invited her to both her family’s big Passover dinners, she was almost close to happy.

“I know it’s short notice, but I thought maybe if you had the time since you couldn’t make last year’s – we try to invite new people each year, it’s kind of the driving point of the whole ceremony, telling the exodus story to someone who hasn’t heard it yet. Oz said he’s been to a seder before, so you and Dawn can be the newbies this year. If you want.”

“I do, yeah. Saturday night?”

“There’s one on Sunday, too. You can come to one or the other, whichever’s easier for you. Or both! Both works, too. Xander always says he likes the second night more.”

“Both sounds good. I don’t think there’s anything that needs cancelling, but I’ll ask Mom tonight to make sure, and –”

“Oh, just – there’s kind of, um, there’s a little, well, it’s a condition for the invitation you’ve gotta accept before you accept the invitation and I wanted to make sure you knew what it was because it’s kind of mandatory for me inviting you at all.”

“How can anything be _kind_ of mandatory? Isn’t that just suggestive?”

“When I asked my mom if I could invite you and Dawn she, um, she asked if your other friends were coming. And I’m – look, I’m real sorry, if I was hosting the Seders myself I’d just make sure we all used paper plates or something and say the more the merrier but I – but Mom actually remembered them and she doesn’t usually…I’m sorry, Buffy. I know they’re your friends, kind of, but she just doesn’t…you’ll still come? She said Dawn and your mom were fine.” She smiled that sad Willow-smile of trying to be happy. “Let’s just say first-degree relatives of friends only.”

“Oh, when you word it like _that_ it’s totally understandable.” She smiled back at Willow, putting her whole face into it, because she honestly wanted to opt into what Willow was offering. “Yes, I’ll come. Both nights, I’m committing to them here and now. I’ll let you know what the rest of the family says as soon as they tell me.”

Dawn was home to be asked. Mom needed a line dropped to the gallery, but as soon as that was done, Buffy dialed Willow’s to leave a message informing her she’d need to put out two extra places for Saturday and three for Sunday. When she hung up the phone, she felt genuinely solid for the first time in several days and was just getting some yogurt out of the fridge when there was a knock on the other side of the basement door and Dru came out to join her.

“Hey, there.”

Dru nodded politely and began getting some tea ready. Giles talked a good game about the luxury of stovetops but played a different one with the electric kettle he kept in his office. She wondered how much he liked the convenience. Probably enough to recommend something for Mom’s birthday, when that came around.

“You want some?” Buffy held up the yogurt container.

“No, I’m quite fine for the moment. But thank you for the offering.”

“Sure thing.” She poured some Grape-Nuts into a bowl and spooned a good helping of organic whole-milk yogurt over it, sliced up a banana and mixed that in too, then squeezed some local farmer’s market honey on top of the whole thing. When it was all done, she stood there for a moment, looking down at the food in front of her. White bowl, metal spoon with flowers on the handle. Food that she’d put together, that she was going to eat, as soon as she was ready to dig her spoon into it. But she had to take a few breaths first. A couple of moments to anticipate something she’d eat and enjoy as soon as she was done with the anticipating. It wouldn’t last long but it’d be good while she had it. Here was something good and solid and cold and sweet, a big bowlful of it right on the counter, and it was hers. Just for her.

It tasted just like she knew it would.

She ate. Dru boiled and brewed. “How are the new gigs coming? Anything interesting?”

“They’re sufficient unto the days. And it’s not polite to gossip, especially not about people that can’t manage to clean up after themselves.”

“And when they’re paying you, am I right?” Dru didn’t respond to that, and Buffy took that as a sign to stop trying so hard. Neither of them said anything until Buffy was finished scraping up the last of the Grape-Nuts. “Think it’ll rain this weekend?” She asked as she put her dishes in the sink.

“It won’t,” Dru said, her eyes closed and head down over a steaming mug.

“You’re sure about that?”

“Yes.”

“The paper said something like a sixty-five, seventy percent chance.”

“I’d feel it pressing in if it was on its way,” she said, dropping the spent teabag into the compost bin. “But there’s nothing waiting in the sky, just some clouds making the worry. We may well be done with rain here all through to next autumn.”

“Right.” Might as well get it over with. “Hey, is Spike around?”

“He’s gone out to gather oranges.”

“Oh. Well, okay, that’s fair. Anyway. There’s something I wanted to tell both of you but I guess one at a time also works.” Dru looked up at Buffy. “Dawn and I won’t be around for dinners this weekend. Saturday and Sunday. And Mom’s not going to be around for Sunday, either. I thought you two should know beforehand.”

“Special Easter dinner?”

“Yeah, that’s this Sunday, isn’t it?” Dru didn’t _need_ to know why, but Buffy knew she needed to tell her anyway. Dancing around it wouldn’t be good for anyone. “But that’s not why we’re going out. Willow invited us over for dinner, and – she invited the Summers family. Just the Summers family. Me and Mom and Dawn. And not…it’s not for you and Spike. She didn’t want you coming. But I didn’t set up the dinner,” and the next part was true enough she could say it without flinching, “and Willow really wanted me to come, and Dawn too. It’ll be the three of us going and you two kind of not. I’m sorry. I just wanted you to know.”

Dru nodded. “Thank you. But you don’t need to be.”

“Need to be what?”

“Sorry. There’s no need for you to be. Myself, possibly a little, but not so much as for you to be worried over me. There’s more disappointment than all else, I think. It’s almost to be expected that we’ve not been invited.”

“You really think so?”

“More or less.” She shrugged and took a sip of her tea. “I’d have very much liked to come to one of those orderly dinners – any big family and friends gathering, I love those dearly, and these two sound quite splendid with all the wine and running. But I know I made myself unwelcome when I last attended to your friend Willow’s house, and coming on the heels of that, I can see why she’s resistant to me and Spike returning. I’m not all too deeply shocked on hearing she doesn’t want us there. Disappointed, yes, that. Sad that it’s still too much to be forgotten. But only a little sorry.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” She smiled. “I know quite well that I’m not sane. It’d be easier if it never got so loud as I can’t push away, but that’s not how it’s set. I’m going better than I was a year ago, your mum’s helped a lot, giving us a place. But I’m not what’s thought of as good, not yet. So being as I am, and being uninvited, those go hand in hand.”

“You don’t sound very angry about this.”

“I’m not. I’ve not much to be angry, when I think on myself. I’ve got some need for being sorry about the whole mess of things, but there’s no deep anger to it.” Dru looked up at Buffy. “Do you think there needs to be?”

“Probably not,” Buffy said. “I mean, you feel what you feel and that’s how it is, you let feelings pass on through and if you’ve got a thought you don’t like you think nothing of it. I know if I wasn’t invited back somewhere I wanted to go I’d be upset, but you sound like you’re taking it well.”

“Mine’s a life made to cope with disappointments and sorrows. When you tell Spike, make sure to say it’s immediate family only, not a party but a close gathering, and he’ll understand. Give him words to that effect.”

“I’ll be sure to remember that.” She did, and Dru was right: he went along with the excuse and said the three of them ought to enjoy themselves, that he and Dru would be fine on their own for a night. It didn’t feel good, tricking him like that – she could tell herself it wasn’t _really_ tricking, it just was bending the wording of the original invitation without saying anything untrue to someone who couldn’t know otherwise – but she didn’t want to make things hard for anyone. A small smudge on her conscience was all she needed. And if she’d tried any harder, Spike would’ve seen it happening. It was weird how hard he could be to fool about things like that.

The Seder _was_ a nice dinner, both nights of them. The first night had more people than the second, even with Mom coming, and both of them went pretty well, even if Buffy had to wear an emergency shawl Willow kept around to make sure nobody saw her scandalously uncovered shoulders and shocked the LA cousins. She didn’t know what was really happening, not like Willow or even Xander did, but she knew that was okay. It was her first time at one of these. She dipped the herbs and spread the sweet and nibbled the harsh and read in English when it was her turn around the table and looked around at the people who she was sitting with when it wasn’t. Looking around at where she was and listening to the meaning beneath the story. Coming out the other side of something so terrible into the promise of something more. Not that she really believed in the story, but the metaphor was a good one.

It all went fine, even with the curveball of Dawn somehow being the youngest attendee both nights meant asking the four questions was her job. “Only if you want it,” Willow said, knowing that was the surefire way to make sure Dawn did, and nobody minded that she read them in English instead of singing them in Hebrew.

“We’ll do this again next year, right?” Willow asked, after she’d hugged Buffy good night.

“Life permitting,” she answered, and hoped.


	11. so that all are blessed that hold the sea

Buffy knew it wouldn’t help her situation if she went ahead and asked Snyder if he’d put his desk in front of the window so his backlit ears made him look like an old-school movie vampire. As catastrophically bad as things were, they could get even worse, and that was something she actively didn’t want. That said, not wanting to say anything to him made saying nothing easier. She’d given her statement – at least, the high school security office equivalent – and she knew he’d read it, and now it was just weathering out the storm. Maybe there wasn’t any defending her actions. But there wasn’t any defending Cameron’s, either. She’d been sure to put that in there, mention it again and again. It didn’t matter if he was a star athlete; Megan had said no. A broken nose was the least he deserved.

Buffy also being a star athlete complicated Snyder’s matters. If she’d just been an incorrigible troublemaker or an irascible rascal or some other old-timey slang made for the sole purpose of growling at young people, maybe he’d have gone ahead and punished her with plain suspension. What she got instead was a temporary and probationary ban from the squad along with two weeks’ detention in, wait for it, the library after school.

Giles might’ve called in a favor for that. Then again, libraries were well known to be the perfect place to stick antisocial people that instigated fights, keeping them safely away from everyone to whom they might possibly cause harm. Or whatever the administration decided to write down for the official file without them actually calling Buffy a pain in the ass in so many words. Knowing Snyder, he’d picked a few choice adjectives like _moody_ to go along with the rest of the euphemisms. Maybe after she graduated she’d go back and request a copy of her records and see exactly what was in there.

In the meantime, her friends had her back and people stepped out of the way when she walked down the hall to report for her first round of detention in the librarian’s private office, which began with Giles closing the door behind her and letting her pick their tea.

“Tell me,” he said after he plugged in the kettle, “how precisely did you punch him?”

“Hard enough to break his nose.” People always forgot she had the strength to repeatedly throw people into the air and catch them and throw them _again_ , for _fun_ , several days a week.

“Yes, and how did you do it? Proper technique is vital for those sorts of encounters.”

“You’re more concerned with _how_ I punched him than the fact I punched him at all?”

“I’ve read the report, and I’m not officially condoning your behavior and actions. It’s simply that I think if one is going to be foolish enough to get into fights, however noble the motivations, those noble fools should be able to throw a reasoned punch without risking breaking their own thumbs.”

What that meant in practice was for the rest her detentions, Giles lugged some boxing gear to school and let Buffy practice in the empty quiet of the after-school library textbook room. Mostly on his hands and a little on her shadow. It felt good to do something physical with someone – not like that, _so_ not like that – so she wasn’t left with just solo exercises like push-ups and squats and running to keep her conditioning. She knew Cordelia would seriously have a cow if she thought Buffy was treating detention as a vacation from training, and that social and physical activity was one of the biggest things she could do to keep herself going. Even if this set of exercises was happening for a very different set of reasons than usual.

Noble. She liked that.

Mom did, too. She didn’t even try hiding how she felt about her daughter getting into a scrape with another classmate over a third classmate’s safety, which was to say proud and supportive of the whole thing. Dawn thought it was the coolest thing her older sister had ever done, punching a guy hard enough to break his face when his face needed breaking.

All her friends were proud of her, from Willow and Xander all the way on down through the squad and Cordelia to the very bottom of the basement. When Buffy asked Spike and Dru if they’d ever been in any fights themselves, Spike just smiled and pointed at his scar, then tugged his duster a bit closer around his shoulders.

“This isn’t some ethical clause violation, is it?” She asked Giles the second Thursday as they wiped their sweat away. “Going above and beyond and asking a student to keep punching you.”

“We’re well in the clear for now, at least until tomorrow.”

“And you’re not suggesting I go around punching people to keep this training rolling.”

“No, but if I were to state for the sake of conversation that I’m usually unoccupied on Saturday afternoons and mention that my flat’s address is listed in the phone book while also making a casual reference to my enjoyment of this sort of exercise, it’s entirely your decision what to do with that information.”

It turned out Giles’ punching bag was way better than his hands. Pulled out into the middle of the living room, after the desk and other furniture got dragged out of the way, she could wail on that thing all she liked without it asking her for a break so sensation could return to its extremities. And with all the space around, she could practice high kicks like in the movies. Giles didn’t have many pointers on those, just on low ones and the occasional medium knee-based attack.

“You learned to do all this when?”

“Not while I was in school.” He said it blandly, like it wasn’t important, the sort of bland which screamed it was vital information that was deeply personal and didn’t belong to anyone else and it was in everyone’s interest to play along with the charade. Buffy did, and made sure her homework was done ahead of time so she could keep learning how to punch stuff right, and when Mom asked how Mr. Giles was doing Buffy didn’t let on that she was pretty sure that was a big tip-off the two of them were in behind-the-scenes cahoots about ways to keep Buffy busy and safe.

“He’s doing fine,” she told her. “He really liked that tea I got him in San Diego.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

The squad ban lasted six weeks. The first day of the ban, Cordelia went up in front of everyone and gave a speech supporting Buffy in her jerkwad nose-breakage, an event she heard about from Cordelia herself plus a couple of other team members. Buffy’s first practice back, there wasn’t any big production or celebration or another belted-out soapbox speech. Just getting back into the line-up and having to get up to speed without anyone holding her hand.

Which worked out just fine.

-

“I keep thinking, maybe I’ll have one of those big summer friendship things like in all the movies. Buffy likes to go into LA for a day to see her friends sometimes when we’re at Dad’s, so I figure some afternoons by myself in San Diego should be okay. And I’ll head out to a park or the beach, or some cool store – sorry, _shop,”_ she emphasized, just to make Spike smirk, “and meet someone there, and hit it off first thing, and we’ll be in full cahoots the rest of summer.”

“Sounds to me like you’ve got it all planned out.”

“I’m trying to leave room for improvisation. I won’t be there the whole summer vacation.”

Dawn knew Dad arranging a couple of days off from work would always be easier than him taking a few weeks. If she and Buffy wanted to hop down for a weekend, they could do that with nothing but a phone call and a train ticket. Even with summer vacation less than a week off, down to low double-digit hours of classes, they were still making sure everything was ready for the go-ahead. Jeanine was cool with it, and so was Dad, but his job wasn’t. Dawn thought things would’ve gotten done around the time she gave him a copy of the school year’s calendar with everything marked off for him. Maybe something came up at work and he’d forgotten about it until Mom reminded him. It was probably something like that.

She and Buffy weren’t going down to Dad’s the first day of summer vacation and staying for the whole three months; they were heading down a few days into vacation and staying for six weeks. Jeanine would take a few days off when Dad went to work in order to balance things out and make it a bit easier for the firm. It wasn’t what Dawn had been hoping for. But it’d still be time spent down at Dad’s.

“Do you have plans of your own? For summer, I mean. You and Drusilla.”

That got Spike to look up from her nails to make eye contact with her. It was kind of weird but good talking to him because even if he didn’t always _look_ at people he was always watching them. He was cool like that. He also hadn’t invited her into the basement in weeks; right now, they were on the porch with the sunlight making his hair shine, even with the roots growing back in.

“Some, yeah. There’s a couple preliminary gigs.” He dipped the brush again, cradled her hand in his, and sighed.

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh, to Hell with it.” He moved onto her right index finger. “If a bloke can’t wear nail polish in California what’s even the bloody point of living here.”

Dawn almost asked Spike what he meant by that but kept the words in her mouth. She didn’t really want to push things, and she wished they’d hurry up and relax so they could get normal again. He was halfway through her left hand when Buffy came out back to join them.

“Hey, guys,” she said, plopping down next to Dawn. Spike tossed out a hello, and Buffy rolled with it, diving right into asking Dawn how her classes were winding down. 

“It’s fine. There’s a couple end-of-year tests, and we’re having pizza on Thursday, and that’s it.” Before Buffy could ask, “Ordering-in delivery pizza, not cafeteria. We all took in some money so it’s paid for and Mr. Carlson’s getting us soda and cookies too.”

“Good teacher. Wish I had someone like him back in fifth grade.”

“You had what’s-her-face.”

“We all called her Big Millie behind her back. It was Mrs. Pierson in front of it. She was a good teacher, just not a cookies and soda teacher.”

“If it makes you feel better, in a couple of years you’ll be able to tell me what teachers you’ve got now I need to worry about and who to try to get. Besides Mr. Giles.”

“He’s the librarian. He comes with the school.”

Spike hadn’t said anything and wasn’t talking. He finished up Dawn’s nails and seemed happy with his handiwork and pocketed up his polish to head back inside. Buffy wasn’t having any of that and jumped on it before he left. “Hey, Mom wanted me to ask you to come up and eat dinner with us before we go.”

“Oh.” He stopped for just long enough to nod. “Tell her we’ll politely decline.”

“Look, could you – whatever you two don’t want to do, that’s fine, but this is us going away for months and it’d make her feel better.”

“Still not really sold on it. Much as I’d like to be.”

“It’d be nice to have you,” Dawn offered.

“I’m absolutely certain it would be.”

Buffy sighed. “Look, we’re leaving for six weeks, Mom’s putting in the effort to do something nice before we go, we’d be a lot happier about it if you two – okay. How about I say it’s a singular, one-time invitation for this one meal before we leave home for the longest stretch of time we’ll ever have been gone and we’d really like our friends to be up there for something that’s this special to us.”

He cocked his head at Buffy. “Just for seeing you two off for so long.” She nodded. “It’s only being offered under special circumstances.” She nodded again. “I’ll ask Dru.”

When he was inside, Dawn whispered to Buffy, “I think that means yes.”

“Of course he means yes, silly.”

The big Thursday night dinner had Mom pull out the stops like they had grandparents coming over, a full Martha Stewart-type guest-plates-from-the-basement event complete with fresh flowers in a vase and napkins that matched the tablecloth. She’d roasted a chicken with cherry tomatoes and little potatoes and garlic and herbs stuffed up its butt, plus Dawn’s favorite caper-and-anchovy cauliflower, Buffy’s favorite mint lemonade, fresh bread, tossed salad, a promise of ice cream for dessert, and five places at the table. It was the two extra places – really the people sitting in them – that got Dawn the most. Sometimes Willow, or Xander, or Willow and Xander, took up other seats at the table. But this was different. The fancy food could happen whenever Mom took a few hours to prepare everything. Dru and Spike eating with them hadn’t ever happened before. They’d both dressed up for it, too, like this dinner was supposed to be something really fancy where they had to impress everyone else: Spike’s hair was re-bleached, the dark roots all gone and white down all to the scalp, and Dru’s hair was in twisty curls pulled back to show off her earrings. Dawn didn’t know if it was that they thought they _had_ to do that, or if they didn’t know just showing up would be enough.

Maybe she should’ve put on a skirt.

They helped Mom bring out everything, because even if it was their first upstairs dinner and they were invited guests they had to do something to help out and not just sit there. When everything was ready and everybody was finally sitting, Dawn had her hands halfway to the basket of rolls when Mom said, “Drusilla? Would you like to begin?”

Dawn pulled her hand back and hoped nobody noticed. Dru was smiling, looking happy. “I would, quite yes. Thank you. It’s just not quite a meal if it’s not given any grace.” She closed her eyes, leaned her head forward, crossed herself like from a movie, held her hands together and said, “Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty. Through Christ, our Lord. Amen.” She crossed herself, still going like it was from a movie, and then opened her eyes to look at everyone while she went on smiling. “There. Now we can begin.”

“Could you pass the chicken?” Buffy said. And that was that, time for everyone to get down to eating. Without school going on, there wasn’t much for Dawn or Buffy to tell Mom about – what their friends were planning on doing over the summer didn’t take that long, with Xander and Willow staying in Sunnydale with summer jobs and Vivi and Janice also hanging around doing day-camp stuff at the university. There was what they’d do in San Diego, and shows the gallery would put on when they were gone, and that Spike and Dru were going to keep cleaning other people’s houses. Dawn didn’t really focus on any of that.

It wasn’t like she hadn’t known people prayed right before meals. Or after them, too, Dru crossing herself again and reciting another prayer about benefits and souls going to rest and peace and mercy when everyone finished eating their ice cream. Most times when Dawn had been over to Willow’s for a fancy dinner there’d been prayers before and after the meal, too. Most of those were for holidays, not what were basically ordinary days. Maybe it was something Dru did all the time, no matter where she was eating or who else was at the meal. She’d have to ask Jeanine if Quakers had any special meal prayers. They didn’t really do the big holidays like Christmas or Easter, but maybe they had meal prayers like Jews, and Dru.

When Dru was finished with her after dinner prayer, everyone looking around and not wanting to move, Mom pushed her chair back and was about to stand up when Buffy beat her to it – “No, we’ll get it.”

“Please, I don’t mind.”

“We’d be bothered, though,” Spike said, already picking up Dawn’s bowl. “It’s one thing for you to serve up your handiwork and still another to also clean it up. Lady of the house taking dirty dishes back, we won’t be having it.” He’d already stacked it with his own, carrying them into the kitchen and Dru and Buffy getting the rest.

“Let me help,” Dawn said, grabbing the chance. Not that there was much left to do, thanks to the invention of dishwashers, but she could at least linger in the kitchen as Dru loaded it up. Dru didn’t seem to mind.

Mom would tell her it was rude to talk to someone about their private religious beliefs if they didn’t bring them up, but she wasn’t here in the kitchen right now to tell her that. “Those prayers you said were nice.”

“Thank you, dearie.” 

“Where’d you learn them?”

“A place I lived for a time,” she said, which only technically counted as an answer. “I doubt you’d know of it, and I haven’t spoken to anyone there in – not since I left, which was, oh goodness me, quite a long time ago, now that I think on it. But I did so like it there, and it’s good to remember to count one’s graces.”

“Was it in England?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, I don’t think I’d know it. I don’t really know England that well – there’s London and Liverpool and I know Ireland’s a whole different island, so if you told me I don’t think I’d recognize it. But could you tell me anyway?”

Dru looked at Dawn carefully, up and down and she finally got the phrase _sizing you up_. That was exactly what Dru was doing to her. Like she had to judge if Dawn was worth telling this thing to. Dawn stood as tall as she could, hands held respectfully behind her back with her chin up and eyes forward and tried not to shake at the way Dru looked right through her. Like Dawn wasn’t really there, like she thought Dawn wasn’t real and shouldn’t be talking to her. She couldn’t ever guess what went on inside Drusilla’s head.

“No,” Dru said, and went back to the spoons. 

“Oh.” If adulthood was one disappointment after another, then what’d just happened was as good an introduction as anything to the whole shebang.

There was a train to catch the next day, but it wouldn’t leave until two, which meant they wouldn’t have to be at the station until one-thirty at the earliest. As fun as it would’ve been to mope around in her room all morning, Dawn was on her way out for a bike ride when she heard Buffy and Dru talking in the kitchen.

“Perhaps a little rude of me. But it isn’t something I want her having in her head. It’s more of me than I want her to own.”

“I get wanting to stay private. Trust me, I do, and there’s times a little bullshit’s what’s called for. You could’ve said at home, you could’ve said at church. If people ask me personal things, sometimes I’ll deflect and sometimes I just make something up.”

“I plan on apologizing, next I see her. Don’t think me ornery enough to avoid doing so just because you’ve pressed.”

“Good.”

Dawn pushed herself against the wall, flat as she could, trying not to breathe too loud. 

“Still won’t be telling her the answers,” Dru said.

Buffy laughed. “What do you care if she knows you were almost a nun?”

“She’s not ready to hear that. There’s nothing and no voice that’s said so.”

“She’s – okay. Fine. Not going to argue with you on that. You’ll get around to sharing when you’re ready. Sure.” She sighed, and the kettle screamed, and then the sound of water poured into a mug. “I’m starting to really get behind electric kettles.”

“The wonders of the twentieth century made manifest in little sparks and shining lights.”

“Something like that.” Buffy sighed again. “You would’ve made a good nun, you know.”

“Blame our mutual friend for that.”

Dawn felt like she was swimming across the Pacific Ocean, her arms and legs cold shaking as she started to creep down the hallway, trying to go quietly and trying to figure out what she was talking about. Buffy wasn’t crazy the way Dru was crazy, and Dawn knew they hadn’t met before she and Spike came to Sunnydale. Dawn didn’t know anyone in the world Dru and Buffy could both already know. It couldn’t be Spike, could it? No way could it be Spike, but who the heck…

Finally, Buffy said, “I blame him for enough already.”

“More than reasonable of you.”

“But you would’ve.”

“I would have made a _spectacular_ nun.”

“Spectacular? You really think so?”

Dawn was at the door and almost didn’t hear Dru give a big, deep, happy laugh. “Oh, pull the other one, it’s got bells on! Think of it, Buffy, a nun graced with visions and voices in her head singing secrets and whispering stories to her? Oh, not two centuries ago, I’d have made sainthood by next Tuesday.”


	12. it’s all part of the palimpsest

You hear what they think of you, what they say of you: whispered and sung, carried on leaves and raindrops to slide inside and settle within, to be gathered up and safe away. You know what is to be done with you, more of the same, more of the rotten chalk ground up and forced past your lips, to creep into your veins and to your heart. You feel it inside of you, with every beat through the pulse, all your veins full of sand. You feel it settle in your wrists, your fingers, all your teeth. And deep inside, the little desert that was once a promise: all of it wretched now, wrecked, as is their wish for you gone accordingly. For you know this. For this is what they want of you.

They wish of you: forget yourself. Forget you are a person. Do not know yourself a creature. Not a living thing. Become like us, our once dearest loved. Fill yourself with sand, stone, earth. Leave your livingness behind. Let the shackles of flesh fall away. We of us no longer alive, we wish to fill you from within with ourselves. Become like us, as we have remade ourselves before your eyes, as we have gone from ourselves as only you could see. We who wear your family’s faces, your family now lost to you. And know the wickedness that is to not be one of us, to be the only living creature remaining.

To give them proof of this, to show them the last of the water: to be chained to the sky, to bear the storms inside.

Then to weep when they cry when their hands bring pain again. For this is it now. The words, small as they are, have nested safely, clutches laid and hatched into monstrous notions that bring you more kindness than that which once was your living family might ever hope again.

To be sick and know it. To be sick and know it and know _to always be sick_ is to hear the world laugh in a wickedly cold joy and sing to you a soft low dirge.

There is a comfort in the dirge.

All the world, all the voices of the world, all the voices. They came to you and you alone, trusting you to listen. Not always kind, not always cruel, a presence not to be denied or deified. They hear you best. They hear you when you weep for want of yourself, all of the past now fantasy: they hear you when you cry to the stars, once your love, now twice gone. All the figures and all the forms, all fallen away. They speak to you, when you think of how the past and the future have both left you, all choices gone – but _you always have a choice_ is whispered to you. Not spoken, not sung, but whispered.

To argue with a whisper is only to invite weeping.

There are those who wish you silent, who wish you to deny the presence of all the songs you hear. All the songs, kind and unkind both. But trust was broken from you long ago. This they always ask of you, ask to you, to forget yourself. To forget yourself as a person. Only those with hands to touch you ask of that. Those without hands, those that sing to you, never ask such a price for their presence. Even when they bring cruelty and pain, they allow you to live within yourself.

They trick you, oftentimes, and take delight in the trickery. Momentary lapses, you suppose. Forgetting to remember to be cruel, falling back to kindness instead. Remembering how to answer to a name. Sharing their treats with you, their pomegranates and custards and sunlight caught by falling leaves. They forget, and you remember so badly, and you almost think there might yet be an echo of your family trapped inside the statues that surround you.

Then you remember again. It brings you to tears, this remembering, the world so far away from you now, nothing coming in except what you already had inside. All the voices, all their happiness and all their little sorrows, that is all that remains to you. That much you think might settle into them – that the world has gone away from you, retreated away, that there is so much pain in the space between you and the world and you wish to be within it again – but even that remains beyond them.

And all the voices whisper to you, _you always have a choice_.

And so you make your choice.

A place you remember from your walking dreams. A place where you might walk gently among the family already living there, the sisters and the great mothers most superior. Listening to them is simple and hearing them is not difficult. This is a place not for you to belong, but to stay. That, they cannot understand, but to which they acquiesce. And you, at first, they allow.

And you, at last, they accept.

You take no vows binding yourself to them, and that they comprehend: better no vows than dishonest ones. There is a whisper of a joke, _you’ve already got all the voices you need, no reason for another_. You tell this to the sisters, and they all laugh, and the voices shout a hallelujah as you laugh with them. Should there be a vow binding yourself to the family and not the place itself, that you might consider. This is a new family, a good family. Half of them are unreal, and you think them a little mad for believing in something so unprovable but all of it remains familiar and all of it remains safe. You were not turned away, and then you were welcomed. They made a place for you. There is a place for you.

You take no vows. You find the world solid beneath your feet. You wander, sometimes, if you wish to: away and back again. You find it easy to go when you know you can return. The world outside is easy to walk, when you know you have a place.

When you go out one day, he comes to you. He smiles at first, only a smile. Such a smile as no one has ever given you before. That smile is enough to bid you to return in the hopes of another. And it comes. It comes. And he speaks to you.

He asks you, _Has anyone ever touched you? As a woman is touched. As a man would touch a woman._

He whispers, _I would touch you. I would touch you gently. As no one has ever touched you. I would, I would._

He says, _Follow me, follow me away, and I will touch you._


	13. those teenage hopes who are teasing your lies, too scared to run off to one little life

The crowd was big enough that Joyce couldn’t spot them right away. When he’d called, Spike told her that he and Drusilla would probably be camped out on the main viewing lawn well ahead of time, but between all the people who’d already staked their claim and everyone standing and walking around, Joyce couldn’t exactly make a beeline for them. 

“Here you are,” Spike said from right behind her, making her jump a little. 

“We’d been worried you wouldn’t be found,” said Drusilla.

They must also have come right from work, or close to it: he would’ve been wearing his coat if they’d gone back to the house. “It’s good to see you.”

“You as well,” she said. “And now that we’re all here, perhaps we can begin our own festivities. You’ve had your supper yet?”

“I grabbed a sandwich from the Co-Op. Why? Have you two eaten?”

“Yeah, a family let us crash their party.” Spike jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the covered seating area with its grills and picnic tables, well and fully packed. “Don’t worry, no harm done. We’d got to talking, I told them a bit about us, and they didn’t want to let a couple of wandering Britons what hadn’t ever been lucky enough to see a good Independence Day celebration go without partaking in the traditional feast before they left for home again.”

“So you two _haven’t_ been living here for years now.”

He just grinned. “They had plenty to share and were happy to let us join in, what with us being hungry and all, and didn’t mind us leaving when we saw our friend arrive. Now that we’re all here, where’d you’d like to sit?”

“I’d think anywhere. As long as we’re not right behind a tree we’ll get a good view.” Last year she’d missed it, staying late at Marie’s after dinner and going home right after, and the year before she’d still been living in Los Angeles. “The paper said they’d be setting them off from the other side of the soccer fields, so wherever there’s a spot left for three people to sit.”

Spike had called her at the gallery to see about the evening. He’d called her from Wendy’s house, insisting and promising he’d gotten Wendy’s permission and waited until he and Drusilla had finished the bathrooms and windows to even think about asking for the privilege of using her phone. He’d known Joyce wouldn’t be home, had wanted to get in touch with her right away, and hadn’t waited for the day to end, just called her at work. Because, apparently, the holiday had snuck up on the two of them – which, as Joyce thought about it while Spike lead the three of them through the sea of people and blankets, made sense. They weren’t from the States, and even if they’d lived here for years it wouldn’t be something they’d think about the same way she did. Their lives didn’t follow a monthly calendar, just weekly schedules. Neither of them had the day off as a federal holiday, and while Joyce hadn’t either, she ran the gallery and could’ve taken the day off if she’d wanted to instead of spending most of it reviewing electrician’s paperwork and the plans for the annual joint university-town ceramic sculpture exhibition. It could’ve waited another working day.

It’d be less to worry about finishing up when the girls got back, and a good way to fill up the hours that would’ve otherwise gone empty. In the meantime, Spike found a good spot, Drusilla spread out a little thin yellow blanket covered in flowers that she must have gotten from the thrift store, and they were sitting on the grass and waiting for it to get dark enough for the fireworks to start.

“Now that we’re all here and all settled in – what do you think, love? Time to really make it a party?”

“High time indeed, dear heart.”

“Right, then.” Joyce watched, confused and then astounded, as Spike unzipped his backpack and pulled out a bottle of red wine, hoisting it up like some sort of trophy to catch the last bits of sunlight. Little clear plastic cups and a corkscrew followed. “Summertime air, blankets on grass, and a drink to mark the day, now we can get to celebrating.”

“Can I see?” It wasn’t exactly imported champagne but it wasn’t four-dollar rotgut, either, Napa Valley cab sav grown and bottled. “Where’d you get this?”

“The wine store right at Mrs. Parsons’s house, just by the Safeway grocery. We figured it’d be nice to bring something and stopped in on the way over, putting the, ah-ahem, _the day’s honest wages to good use_.” He pulled a bit of a Shakespeare movie accent on that last phrase, which made Drusilla laugh more than Joyce thought it deserved.

After they’d passed the hurdles of getting their new jobs, all four of them, they’d sat Joyce down again and asked her what California minimum wage was, if that was what they should ask for, whether or not they should be paid by the hour or by the day, and if they should insist on cash or check. She understood they were asking their questions out of genuine ignorance on the subject, with no real clue as to how to make a guess one way or the other, and answered as best she could.

But right now, Spike was pouring the wine, and all concerns over bad jokes and stumbling beginnings were gone. It was a bottle of exactly the sort of wine made for drinking in plastic cups out on the grass, which was absolutely a compliment to the winery. She hadn’t had a drink like this in ages – not the wine, which was stronger and sweeter than she’d have guessed from the label. But the drinking outside, in twilight, on thin blankets and slapping at little bugs while people talked and drank along with her. Something full that pulled the edges of her mouth into a smile without her thinking about it.

“It’s a good bottle,” she said as Spike poured her a second cup. “Thank you for bringing it.”

“Then you’re liking it?”

“He means to say you’re welcome,” Drusilla said.

“Yeah, that too.” Spike sighed and took another drink. “Both that and the question if you’re enjoying drinking it.”

“I am. Like I said, it’s a good bottle and it was very thoughtful of you to bring it to this.”

He smiled and looked away from her, down at the blanket. “I admit, I was a bit worried – you haven’t got any wine in the house, and I wouldn’t have wanted to insist if you’ve given up drinking. But as long as you’re happy with it let’s never mind that, we’ve got how much longer until they start the show?”

“Oh.” Joyce checked her watch. “Another forty-five minutes, give or take. Let’s say an hour to be safe.”

“An hour. So much time all to ourselves, just for waiting.” Drusilla sipped her wine and shifted to splay her legs out, tossing her braid over her shoulder. “I’d forgotten how nice waiting can be, when you know there’s to be something arriving at the end of it. Not just waiting without purpose or sight to the future.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Joyce said, and she did.

The forty-eight minutes passed quickly enough. They spent most of it talking about their respective jobs and responsibilities, such as they were. Cleaning windows and sorting out the delicates for a warm cycle wasn’t quite the same as trying to pin down a timetable and workflow for property assessment, but there was enough in common of a job being a job to have some conversation. 

Spike excused himself about halfway through to smoke a cigarette, and once the show started, he insisted they all be quiet: it didn’t matter how much noise was going on all around them as long as nobody on their own blanket was making any. The show wasn’t as big as ones she’d seen in Los Angeles, but that sort of comparison wasn’t exactly fair, not going by the sizes of the different cities and the budgets they each had. A better way to judge them was how much she enjoyed herself, and by that measure, it was what Spike had shouted out to be _bloody fantastic_.

Joyce knew it hadn’t just been the wine. It’d been the wine plus all the rest of it. The drinking outside, the smells from the barbeques and the stale flat beer and Spike’s lingering cigarette smoke that brought back dozens of college parties all over her at once, the fact that the show itself had been a good one by any decent measure of brightly colored explosions in a dark sky. They watched the whole thing, waiting for most of the rest of the audience to clear out, and Spike’s smile hadn’t faded one bit even by the time he was folding up the blanket and stuffing it into his backpack.

When Drusilla dropped off their garbage, the empty wine bottle hit several empty beer bottles to make the sharp, clean sound of glass on glass that satisfied something deep in Joyce’s chest she couldn’t put a word to. It wasn’t that she missed that sound. She just missed hearing it.

“Now that we’re all finished here,” Drusilla said, holding her arm out, “shall we be off?”

“Lead the way, love,” Spike smiled, putting his hands in the crook of her elbow.

“My car’s this way,” Joyce told them.

“Oh, right,” Drusilla said, she and Spike pivoting towards the parking lot.

The next day she called Hank’s and learned the girls had a good time at their own Fourth of July celebration. Some of Jeanine’s family had come this year to join with them, and she’d made a rhubarb pie – not rhubarb-strawberry, Dawn pressed when she got the phone, _plain rhubarb_ – to bring to the gathering that had been absolutely delicious. Buffy was heading to Los Angeles to see old friends and would be back tomorrow and could talk then, and Dawn had gone to another one of Jeanine’s Friend meetings and was becoming friends with her soon-to-be cousins-in-law and might even go over to lunch at one of their house’s sometime, especially if they could all make rhubarb pies like that.

“We’ll make one together when you get home,” Joyce promised. “The two of us together. From scratch.”


	14. so you think you can stop me and spit in my eye

“Hey, Willow,” Buffy said, strong arms squeezing Willow’s torso tight and then releasing her to really take in the differences of the last few weeks with an approving nod. “Nice hair.”

“You really like it?” Willow asked, just to be sure. “I know it’ll grow back, but I wasn’t sure – I thought, better not cut it too short in case. You think it looks good?”

“Of course I do.” Of course Willow knew Buffy didn’t give out compliments like that if she didn’t mean them, but when Xander had just given her approving finger-guns and her parents had asked her what she’d be taking this upcoming semester, it felt nice to have the confirmation. “You went to Hair Cabana?”

“Yeah, Barb knew exactly what I wanted. She said to come back in about six weeks for a trim. You want to tag along for that?” She followed Buffy inside the Espresso Pump.

“You know, I think I would. But just to be safe, ask me again in five weeks.”

“Will do. Anyway.” Willow ordered an earl grey Arnold Palmer. Buffy went for a plain iced coffee, no milk or sugar. “What I was thinking was something to show it off. A little different than what I usually go for – not _too_ different, but, you know. Fresh.”

It wasn’t exactly that Willow didn’t want to talk about Oz-related topics with Xander. It wasn’t so much that general romance wasn’t something they could discuss with each other. Now that they were both dating – and how! Cheerleaders and guitarists, the stuff of her favorite old paperback romances, even if the cheerleader was their not-quite-ex-bully Cordelia who hadn’t gone public about dating Xander until after he’d joined the swim team – romance was a subject that they could mutually engage with. To a degree, at least. How their relationships were going, that was fair game, and so were the sorts of concerns that came with having someone around who you could smooch but having them unavailable. Cordelia was traveling – just _traveling_ , she’d said she wouldn’t know everywhere she was going, some sort of unplanned Henry James-novel romp – for the rest of the month, and Oz would be on tour as far afield as Turlock for another couple of weeks. What Willow wanted right now wasn’t just someone who’d understand waiting for the other smooching partner to come back, or even someone to talk to about how much she wanted to dress up for their return, but someone who’d give her advice on the exact right kind of lipstick to make a smart dress shine. Xander was her greatest friend in the world, but Buffy was her best friend, and to be kind to Xander, Buffy was better at coordinating all the moving parts of outfits than he was.

She also had more suggestions than just _hit up the thrift store._ Yes, the thrifting was good for a small town on account of it also being a college town, but there was a limit to inventory availability with Willow’s typical budget. She couldn’t count on incidental estate sales, and there was also makeup to consider in addition to the potential accessories. Buffy took putting together a good outfit as more than a challenge; she saw it as a battle plan. Map out the terrain. Be honest about your weak points. Make sure to keep yourself open to a change in tactics if circumstances shift, but also don’t be too quick to jump into something new just because there’s something slightly different happening. And above all, applicable to both fashion and warfare, proper footwear could make or break a tactical advantage.

“A good pair of shoes goes a long way. The right boots, they’ll pull the whole look together. We’re hitting the off-season right now, which means we’re coming into the right time to go for the good sales.”

“Off-season boot shopping. Got it.”

“Jeans, you don’t have to buy those new but if you’re not ready to hurry up and wait and keep checking the thrift stores – are you? It’s usually better to spend time than money with these things. Get a couple nice pairs, treat them well, and you won’t need more than that. Shirts, that’s a bit trickier. What works with skirts probably won’t work with jeans, and vice-versa.”

“This is all great,” Willow said. “Now how’s about we head over to my place, check out where the gaps are in my wardrobe?”

“You mean today?” Buffy stared at her. “Like, right now today?”

“We don’t have to leave the second we’re done with our drinks.”

“Look, Wil, I’m – would tomorrow work?”

“Of course it’d be fine, I was just thinking, today would be nice, too. Get in a lot of quality friend time.”

“I…yeah. Tomorrow’s going to be a lot better for me than tonight.”

“Oh! Sorry. I mean, if you already had plans of course you should keep them, I wouldn’t want to impose like that.”

“No. I mean, no, I didn’t already have plans, it’s just been busy for me and – tomorrow afternoon would be a lot better.”

“Right.” Buffy didn’t look all _that_ tired. The coffee seemed to be working already. She just didn’t want to spend the afternoon _and_ evening with Willow. More of the afternoon, there was that: they finished their beverages and did a little walking and talking along Sunnydale’s main drag, checking out the coming-soon posters at the movie theater, stopping for ice cream and lingering at the window of the De Luna jewelry store and exchanging plenty of laughs and smiles. Then they hugged good-bye and went their separate ways, to return again to each other’s company tomorrow. Buffy said she’d come over at one, and Willow knew she would, because when Buffy set a time like that she stuck to it. She’d just thought, if Buffy could be able to manage two and a half hours with Willow today, she could’ve made it to three. Or they might’ve gone to Willow’s instead of hanging out downtown.

And not that she didn’t like hanging out downtown with Buffy, doing all the window-shopping and ice-cream eating. It was the small kind of good, like just cuddling with Oz or movies and pizza with Xander. Willow loved the small kind of good. She just didn’t like it when things made it be so _little_. And sure, Buffy knew her limits, and sure, she’d just gotten home from San Diego yesterday and maybe she wanted a little more time with her mom today. But still, and even so, and nobody was at fault here, and it was hard to not feel even just a tiny bit petulant her best friend had to call the day off so early.

At least it was a nice day, all blue skies and clean air and sunshine. Late summer in Sunnydale, just before the fall semester started, had the town sleepy enough that she had whole streets all to herself. Maybe next year she’d be able to get a real summer job, not just volunteering at the kids’ reading program at the public library. More than just getting some extra spending money for nice lipstick, it’d be good to be responsible for something. She’d have to ask Xander for tips on job hunting. He’d been working one job or another since he was a twelve-year-old paper boy, and she’d never known him to go more than a couple of weeks without a gig. If anyone knew how to get a job, it was him.

Willow was busy enough in the thoughts of what she might do with a steady income that what she saw didn’t register at first. It could’ve been anyone behind the fence. Anybody picking fruit off the trees in the church’s yard. That wasn’t strange. Sunnydale kids did that all over town, no matter the tree or yard. It was just that Sunnydale kids didn’t usually do it while also carrying a tote bag and putting the fruit inside it for later toting instead of eating a couple of pieces of literal low-hanging fruit and then running away.

She crossed half the parking lot to get a better look at what sort of situation was happening, and then the other half to make sure she recognized who she was seeing. But there really wasn’t any mistaking Buffy’s basement resident, not with that hair and definitely not with that coat.

Willow had no idea what exactly she was supposed to do in this sort of situation. Either he knew he shouldn’t be doing what he was doing, and if he did her telling him so wasn’t going to stop him, or he didn’t know and she’d just be eliminating any plausible deniability he still had. But she knew no way would telling him to stop actually get him to stop. Spike solved Willow’s dilemma by noticing her before she had a chance to leave, smiling at her, and walking over to the fence to stand right in front of her. “Ms. Rosenberg. Nice to see you.”

“Yes. Hi there.” She knew she’d be roasting to cinders if she was wearing either or both that much black, that much leather, but covering up everything aside from his head and hands was one way to avoid sunburn without having to resort to SPF 80 all over his body.

“How’s life treating you these days?”

“Pretty well.” If she took off her helmet, she’d be saying she’d be staying, but if she kept it on, that’d be like wearing a hat indoors. She took it off because she wasn’t actually riding her bike at the moment and the bottom strap needed to be loosened anyway. “And, um, and yourself?”

“All right, considering – Mrs. Gardias isn’t around this week, taking a vacation up to San Francisco, so we’ve got a day for nobody but ourselves. Been a long time since we’d only had to be responsible for each other.”

“That sounds nice.”

“Are you kidding me? Bloody hell, it’s _wonderful.”_ He laughed. “For today, absolutely, it’s quite nice for a day, but more than that, I wouldn’t say it’s something to want. It’s got its moments, being alone in the world, but it doesn’t take long to get to you.”

“Yeah, I can imagine.”

“Nice of you to say so. What’s it you’re up to these days?”

“Me? Oh. Well, school’s starting next month, and my boyfriend gets back to town soon, and…not a whole lot. I was going to…” Maybe if she put her helmet back on, pinching strap or no, Spike would get the picture and she’d be able to leave. “I was just biking around for a while.”

“You grew up here, yeah?” She nodded. “You’re absolutely spoiled for summertime. Nowhere else in the world has it as good as California.”

“Okay.” She glanced around and couldn’t see Drusilla anywhere.

“You feeling all right?” He peered at her. “Nothing’s the matter?”

“Fine! No, I’m fine. I’m just not…I mean, you were saying?”

“I was going to ask if you’ve traveled much.” He shifted the bag of plums up higher on his shoulder. 

“No, not a whole lot.” She put her helmet on and clicked it. “I’ve got some cousins in Phoenix, but I’ve only been there a couple of times. We used to go to St. Louis for the High Holidays, since my mom’s family’s out there, but not for the last few years. I mean, I haven’t been there in a while. My cousins are still around.”

“Never been to St. Louis but I’ve been through Chicago, that’s almost the same climate, and you’re doing well to stay here for summer. It’s so nice how hot it gets.”

“I suppose so.” She shifted her weight and glanced away from Spike, but he just kept on looking at her. “Does, um, does Drusilla like it?”

“We came out here for her, she’d better sodding well like it,” he growled, glaring, then suddenly laughed. “No, I’m just fooling with you. We both like it here.”

“Then I’m glad you’re having fun. But was, well, I was…” It wasn’t like she couldn’t just ask to be excused, but she couldn’t just say she had to be going – “Hey, if you could pass a message onto Buffy, I’d –”

“Ms. Rosenberg.” Drusilla strode up to stand next to Spike, gave him a kiss on the cheek before turning back to Willow. Even though it was a day without anyone to work for, or anyone to see, she was still out in a full face of makeup with plain blue jeans and a tight red t-shirt. “Pleasure to see you today. How are you doing?”

“Oh, good, very good, everything’s dandy, I promise. Lots of good words shared.”

Drusilla nodded, slowly. “Much as I’d like to share some words with you, it seems about time we’re all of us ready to depart.”

“Yeah! I mean, Spike and me were just finishing up here.” She forced out a laugh. “Sorry I can’t stay and talk longer. But I’d really better be heading on home.”

Spike looked at her, looked her up and down, and Willow had never seen a moment of comprehension blossom on someone’s face before. But it did on Spike. “Oh. Yes, I see. You’re ready to head off.” He nodded. The fidgeting, bike helmet, and faint excuse hadn’t been enough. He’d needed Drusilla to tell him what to look for, and even then, she needed to point out he had something to look for to begin with. “Wish you’d have just come out and said when I’d asked, but if there’s not any –”

“Darling,” Drusilla nudged him. “I’m sorry for his getting like that,” she said to Willow. “But we’d better be leaving, ourselves. There’s loquats from the alleys waiting for our gleaning. We’ll all of us be heading off now, all our own ways.”

“Right. Of course. Apologies, Ms. Rosenberg, and you’d best be leaving for home. Our love to your mother and all that.”

“I will. Absolutely. See you around.” She nodded, and kept smiling, and didn’t look back until she was out of the parking lot, across the street, and two blocks away. It wasn’t hard to spot them, what with them being the only other people around. She watched them walk down the street and turn into the alleyway, just like Drusilla had said they were going. Then she went back to check the plum trees.

They’d cleaned them pretty clear but there was some left around where Willow could quickly reach out and grab and pedal off in the other direction, steering one-handed until she was far enough away she felt safe to eat it alone.

It seemed right to say the prayer for fruit, _Borei Pri Ha’Eitz_ , given the situation and circumstances. The situation being having just grabbed it from the Episcopalians, and the circumstances being that she was someone who didn’t need to glean and had to do something to make up for it. Drusilla and Spike definitely fit the bill for being strangers, and poor, and poor strangers. But then, Willow figured when she got home and checked her dad’s reference books against the relevant Talmudic commentary, leaving the corners unharvested for anyone who came along was pretty much okay by everyone.

And it had, really, been as delicious a plum as she could remember ever eating.

-

The first cloudy day in October saw Giles deserving of the word _chipper_. Buffy wouldn’t have thought he could pull that off, he who’d seemingly been born into tweed, but here he was, smiling in public and wishing people good afternoons. For Giles, that was downright overjoyed. All his years in America had done him good in the emotive elocution front. He managed to put on an appropriately serious face for all of Mrs. Hu’s students coming for their copies of art history supplements but dropped it as soon as they were gone and it was just the two of them catching up on check-ins and shelving.

“It’s exactly like Steinbeck wrote. There’s no weather here, only _climate,”_ he huffed. “Honestly, it’s by far the most depressing aspect of living here, all the sunshine. The monotony is dreadful, just dreadful. A month of it, perhaps three at most, and it manages to stay wonderful, but the first day of that fourth month comes and all you want is an honest shift in the seasons, not more of the same as yesterday and what you know will be exactly the same as tomorrow.”

“We’ve got seasons here,” Buffy said, “two of ’em. Wet and dry. It’s just there’s not a lot of wet.”

“More’s the pity. You’d have a significantly higher class of bathtubs if that weren’t the case.”

“If you’re going to judge a civilization on its plumbing – okay, assuming they’ve got plumbing to begin with, I guess there’s worse ways to do it. But I wasn’t the one who _decided_ to come stay here, get a job here, integrate myself into the community, take impressionable young students under my wings. What gives?”

“I admit there’s some fun to be had in complaining over the weather. It’s refined to an art form back in England. But, more seriously,” he took off his glasses to polish them, “when I was looking for a place as much _unlike_ England on the planet as could possibly exist, southern California was what I found. And not only for the lack of weather, though that has the secondary purpose of reminding me exactly where I’m no longer living.” He pushed them back up his nose. “It’s simply that as much as I enjoy my life here, I can’t help but think a bit more rain wouldn’t go amiss.”

Even now, she sometimes thought Sunnydale was too small, too short, not enough of a city to get inside the way she could Los Angeles or even San Diego. “Tell me about it. Everybody would be happy with a few more inches of rain a year – just as long as it happens during the rain-approved part of the year. Rain at _any_ time of year? It’d be anarchy, Giles, anarchy! Seriously, though, this isn’t going to rain. It’s just cloudy. Sorry to get your hopes up.” She got a smile out of him and took that as a win.

“I’m perfectly willing to accept any meteorological variety, whether it’s precipitation or simply an overcast sky.”

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case with the cheerleading coach: they practiced inside that afternoon, even though there wasn’t even the threat of rain yet.

Two weeks later, the days were more overcast than not, the breezes started to prickle, and Buffy was parked in the kitchen and working through her notes on the Federalist Papers in the hopes of getting enough done to have the weekend free for her own ends. There was a knock on the other side of the basement door and Dru came up, leaving it open to let the faint sounds of the dryer follow her.

“Good afternoon,” she said.

“Hey there,” Buffy said back.

“I was –” She stopped, looked around, shook her head, kept looking and started mumbling to herself. Buffy went back to her notes. Dru would find her way back into reality sooner or later and there wasn’t any point in just sitting around for the inevitable when there was a paper to write. She’d gotten through the John Jay and James Madison segments and was starting with Alexander Hamilton when Dru asked, “I was going to make up some tea, did you want any?”

“You know, yeah, I would, that’d be really nice right about now. Thanks.”

“Spike won’t be joining us,” she said as she got everything ready. “He’s got his own work to do downstairs.”

“What’s he up to?”

“He’s asked for no interruptions, just the hum of modern machinery for company. He’s saying it’s the best he can do for the sea here. No interruptions, just weaving flames into flags to fly them through the dark. Would you care for sugar?”

“Just milk.”

“We’re nearly out. Where’s the list for letting your mum know?”

“It’s fine, I’ll remind her.” Dru put the kettle on and there was nothing to do but hurry up and wait. Buffy looked out the window at the flat, gray sky that looked flatter and grayer than it would if it was going to just stay cloudy and sighed heavy and dramatic. “Stupid weather.”

“What’s the matter with it?”

“Nothing, it just looks like it’s going to rain, and I’d wanted –”

“No, it won’t,” she said. Declared, really, like that was all there was to it. Which could’ve been Dru having an inside scoop from the weatherman, or her knowing something Buffy didn’t because she’d stepped out of reality again. It could go either way.

“The paper said something like a seventy percent chance of early storms,” Buffy said as diplomatically as she could pull off.

“The paper’s wrong.” The kettle started to scream but didn’t get past the first screech when Dru grabbed it off the stove and began filling the mugs with boiling water. “There’s not to be any rain happening now or soon, not for some time yet.”

She leaned forward, crossing her arms and resting her elbows on her textbook. “What makes you so sure about that?”

“There’s nothing telling me it’s on its way.”

“Uh-huh.” Dru kept looking at her like she really ought to know what she was talking about. Okay, time to just go ahead and forgo decorum. “Is this one of those, it’s the voices deals, in which case I’m not arguing with them I’m just checking that’s what it is so I know, or is it something else?”

“It’s my ears.” She pointed at one for emphasis. “I’d know if rain were coming because I’d feel it pressing in. Snow, also, and fog sometimes, but here it’s mostly rain. All through my ears and into my head. When rain’s on its way, really on its way, running out to reach us, then I feel it. Making its presence known well ahead of time, clouds or no. It’s nothing to do with any of the voices or the visions. It’s the air itself that lets me know.”

“Any low-pressure system comes in, your ears get all achy?” Dru nodded. Like animals and earthquakes, but Buffy wasn’t saying that out loud. “It must be nice not to be surprised by it.”

“Very much.” She handed Buffy her tea, bitter and milky just how she liked it. “I’m better than any fancy satellite.”

“You born lucky with that?”

“Not hardly close. I got a nasty cold right after I broke, when I was still all freshly shattered. An ordinary sick, nothing to do with my head or my heart, just the nose and throat, all through the breathing systems. It settled into my ears last of all. I tried to say how much things hurt, but all anyone heard was me talking about the voices, not the body’s pain. Everything I cried over was because I’d gotten all shattered, and never for any other reason. I can’t remember how I got myself to the doctor’s with all the voices singing strong when I wasn’t yet used to hearing them, but I remember her taking the little light and just having a look and her saying she saw what was wrong right then and there. I took home a fine little bottle of pills that cleared my ears right out, ten days and I could hear my family speak again, not just the voices. It was years ago, ages and ages, but it makes itself remembered when rains come in.”

“Huh.” No wonder England was so tea-mad: you had something right there to give you a minute to think of what to say. “I’ve got an aunt in Mendocino who swears she can predict earthquakes with her hips,” Buffy offered, for lack of anything more substantial.

“There’s always noise about rain, too. But the voices wouldn’t be joining together if there wasn’t anything for all of them to sing about.” Dru took a long drink of her own tea. Hypothesis confirmed with field evidence. “That there’s so much singing, that it gets so loud – sometimes it hurts to get through those days. Though at least I can think, and tell myself the real truth, that it’s a real thing they’re singing about to me. And better they sing about something real than try to make me think their other songs are what’s the world made of.”

“Yeah, I guess I get that. I mean – not exactly, but when I’m trying to figure out what’s me paying attention to what’s going on with everything else, is Snyder really out to get me, and figuring out what’s going on with me, at least when it’s something I’m _supposed_ to worry about. It’s almost good to stress over something real.”

“And if anyone believes you when you’ve told them.”

“That’s always hard.”

“You tell them and you tell them –”

“Yeah! If your ears hurt that’s your ears, not your brain. If classes are hard that’s not skewed priorities.”

“Downright precisely,” Dru said, and they raised their mugs to each other in a solidarity Buffy was happy to have without stopping to question it.


	15. on the rooftop, the nineteenth floor

Xander knew that in a good universe, this was something he’d take to his dad, and in a great one, it’d be something he’d take to some guy-type friends for the sort of proper male-based camaraderie that was exactly what he needed right now to get through things. As usual, the universe wasn’t providing. So he did what he always did, and made do as best he could. Usually he’d go to Willow, or lately Buffy, but this wasn’t the sort of thing he needed a woman’s take on. Willow was still floating on Oz-generated relationship vibes, and Buffy was too close to the source of the problem to have any reasonable perspective for his side of things.

He’d thought general group bonding could fill the gaps, and he really did feel better after a couple days’ worth of freefalling through the swim team’s attempts at consolation and making medium-sized talk during shop class and his after-school and weekend jobs. Leaning on Oz worked well enough, but something was missing – namely, an actual conversation. Being friends with Willow had spoiled him for that early on in life, and he’d never managed to quite recover. Xander knew what he needed, really needed, was someone to listen to _him_ , not the general shape of his complaints. Which was when it hit him: he needed a man who listened like a woman.

“Now, when I say this is the worst part, trust me that I’ve done my soul-searching and list-making and all the tabulations and it really _is_ the worst part about breaking up with Cordelia that she somehow managed to be _right_ about all the reasons why we should. And I’m not disagreeing with her! I’m not saying she’s wrong about me. I’d like to if I could but you know Cordelia –”

“No, I don’t.”

“It’s a figure of speech, Spike. I’m sure you’ve got those in England too.”

Spike rolled his eyes and lit a cigarette from the bribery pack Xander had paid for, in fragrant violation of the state of California’s no-indoor-smoking policy and all the people sitting around them at the Bronze. From the few times they’d talked, Xander knew politeness was a feature Spike didn’t really have. Not as a habit; more of a hobby, really, a weekend thing he practiced sometimes. “Fine. Keep going.”

“Okay, so – right, Cordelia’s always honest about how she’s feeling, it’s her _thing_ , and it’s not like I asked her to size me up and – okay, maybe I was the one who asked where things were going because we’d just taken the SATs that afternoon, but at least let me hang onto some illusions about my immediate future. I’m not even asking her for summer, just give me until graduation like any reasonable person, but she said we ought to call it off as soon as possible and right then and there in the Espresso Pump would work fine. She bought me a mocha and gave me a kiss and that was it. A mocha. Does that seem right to you?”

“Right about what?”

“Nah, it doesn’t matter.” Xander sipped the beer he’d paid for that Spike had been the one to buy. “What she said was we ought to break it off because it wasn’t like she had a future in Sunnydale and keeping on dating me would give her a reason to come back here and she didn’t even want _that_ in her life, she just wants out of here. It’s not like I’m keyed in and psyched to stay in my hometown all my life. Sunnydale’s not – where are you from again? I mean, yeah you’re from England, but what city specifically?”

“London.”

“Okay!” He snapped his fingers. “You get what I’m going for here! Sunnydale’s not London, we’ve got the university, and we’ve got the university. Sure, let Cordelia leave for someplace that’s got at least three different coffee shops. I’d love to join her if I could, but I’d join anyone leaving, tie me up and gag me and throw me in the trunk of the car if that’s what gets me out of here. Except that’s not happening, that’s never happening, I know I can’t ship myself out unless I’m joining the army or lottery winner myself into a major grant as some sort of new conceptual artist rotating through modern art galleries. But I knew that already. She knew that when we started dating. I guess I just wanted…”

“What was it you’d wanted me to do again besides listen to you ramble on about your girl leaving you?” Spike tapped some ash into the pint glass he’d already emptied.

“Make some show of manly sympathy.”

“Over what, exactly?”

“Over –” All right, maybe this _was_ a bad idea, but it’d been the best one he’d had. “Over having someone break up with you.”

Spike stared at him for a moment, then snorted out a laugh and sucked in another lungful of cancer. Xander knew that wasn’t a joke, and that the way he’d said it hadn’t been delivered to lighten the mood – and Xander knew something about self-effacement to lighten up a room – but Spike still laughed. “You should’ve said sooner. I’d have told you just be on your way and spare you the trouble of rambling on and wasting both our afternoons.”

“Wasting – wait, you’re telling me you’ve never had a breakup?” Spike kept smiling. “Never? Not ever, never?”

“I’ve parted ways with people a few times, sometimes nicely and sometimes not, but I don’t think burning bridges to keep people from following after’s quite what you’re going on about.”

“Hang on.” This was almost enough to get the ache of Cordelia’s atomic-grade honesty out of his head. “I came to you in the hopes of getting a little personal male bonding over my girl up and leaving me, which I _thought_ was a universal thing, and you’re sitting there and telling me you’re somehow the one man in the entire history of the human species who’s never had a girl break up with him. So – what? Are you the one who always did the breaking? You always left them instead of the other way around?”

That finally got Spike to stop and consider, making thoughtful noises and faces. He dropped the remains of his cigarette into the glass, looking like he was ready to say something or light up another one. And then he did something Xander had never seen anyone do before: he stood up and walked away.

Xander sat there, gaping like the fool he knew he was, as Spike _walked away_. 

“Hey!” he called, but Spike was already gone. Across the room, opening the door, out of the Bronze and into the evening. Night. Late afternoon. Whatever.

It was a dick move, dick enough it called for a major set of balls to pull off, but also kind of cool. The aloof kind; specifically, the aloof kind that attracted women-type people and a few of the softer men who each wanted to be the one to unravel that Spikey knot. Somehow, Xander couldn’t blame them for wanting to do that. Right now, without even trying, he could think of at least six – ten – a good baker’s dozen situations he’d have liked to get up and leave from that he hadn’t been allowed or able to.

Still, Spike had been his last resort before turning back to the swim team’s attempts at deep social bonding unfortunately hampered by years of masculine posturing against having feelings altogether. At least he still had physical exhaustion as a coping mechanism one way or another, whether it was the two-handed shuffle or the good old-fashioned Australian crawl.

-

Dawn knew not being able to invite someone over was a problem if she wanted them to be friends. She could pull out all sorts of excuses and explanations, and plenty of people didn’t mind, but it still got to her. Not just that it wasn’t fair how she could go to other people’s houses and they couldn’t come to hers. That, and how much of her life she had to keep quiet and all to herself. How she couldn’t tell anyone what really went down on Revello Drive. She couldn’t even tell _Dad_ what was happening; if she couldn’t tell him, no way she was telling someone from school. It wasn’t until Spike and Dru started spending most days out of the house that she felt safe inviting anybody over, even if it was just for a couple of hours one afternoon. She’d give them a silly warning about not to go into the basement because her mom would freak, and they’d roll with that, and she finally had someone in her room to laugh over the new short stories in the most recent _American Girl_ and try out French braiding.

Not that Dawn hadn’t been _able_ to invite people over six months ago. It’d just been that she didn’t want to tell anyone her family had a couple of crazy people in the basement who were as sick as her sister. Or put anyone in a situation where they might find out about all the sick people in the house. But now that Spike and Dru were working long days, she didn’t have to worry so hard. It was still important to be _careful_ , but she didn’t have to be cautious. Those were important distinction in her life.

“We could just hang out at my place,” she said to Vivi, the words still so sweet in her mouth.

“Yeah, I’d like that.”

“You’d have to leave around five. I know, it’s kind of dictatorial, but that’s Mom’s rule. I wish she didn’t have it, but as rules like that go it’s not that big a deal. Is it?”

“I guess it isn’t. I really swear I don’t mind. My mom’s always serious about dinner being at six, I mean _hard_ serious, so I guess it’ll mean I’m not going to be late for sitting down at the table tonight. So sure, I’ll be out by five thirty, the latest.”

“Good,” Dawn said. “That it’s okay. I mean, it’s good you’re okay with it. So…”

Vivi shrugged. “So what did you want to do?”

“Whatever you want to do.”

Even if nobody took her up on her invitation, even if she spent most of her afternoons alone in the house, just knowing it was safe to _offer_ an invite made her feel good. It made her feel like she was finally settling into Sunnydale. She was pretty sure – at least, she was as sure as she could be without asking some really uncomfortable questions she was pretty sure she didn’t want answers to – that finally being able to invite people over to her house was what got Maddy to invite Dawn over to a sleepover. She would’ve said yes anyway, whatever the circumstances, but she liked to think that she was at a point of good friendship. She was someone who invited, and got invited herself.

Whatever the reason was, it didn’t take long before _everyone_ was asking Dawn to do their nails. All ten girls sat in Maddy’s living room, the rented-for-the-occasion _Matilda_ and _Casper_ tapes forgotten in favor of Dawn teaching them to lay on an undercoat and a topcoat the way Spike had taught her. “This is how they do it in England,” she told them, which made the whole thing even more impressive. They did finally go for _Matilda_ , everyone sitting on their sleeping bags and passing around the bowl of Chex mix. Dawn only half-watched the movie. She’d read the book already and didn’t mind knowing what was going to happen. It let her pay attention to how carefully everyone ate their snacks and brushed their hair, with nobody wanting to mess up the nail polish Dawn worked so hard on.

“Who taught you how to do this?” Janice asked.

“One of Buffy’s friends,” Dawn said. “You wouldn’t know him.” It was a good enough answer, and with the pizza getting delivered just then too, nobody asked her anything else about it. When Mom picked her up in the morning, she didn’t even have time to ask her anything before Dawn started telling her everything – nothing melty in the living room but they all took a break for ice cream bars around nine, running into Maddy’s dad when she had to use the bathroom at night and how spooked he’d been, everyone liking her nail polish, she’d already brushed her teeth that morning, how the movie wasn’t exactly the same as the book but she liked the movie’s ending a lot more.

“It sounds like you really enjoyed yourself.”

“It was great! She said she might do this again next month, so if I’m not going to Dad’s when she has it could I do it again then too?”

“I don’t see why you couldn’t, if you stay on top of your homework.”

“I always do.”

“Of course,” Mom said, and smiled. “I’m glad you had a good time.” Dawn was about to tell her she was glad, too, that it’d been the best of times she’d had in a long time, except for how Mom said, “I’m really glad you’re finally making friends.”

“Thanks.”

The light turned green, and Mom looked away from Dawn. She kept her eyes on the road and kept talking. “I’d worried – I know I give Buffy a lot of attention. I know you’re smart enough to understand why your sister needs us to pay particular attention to her, and that it doesn’t mean I love you less. I’m just very happy that you’re both settling into Sunnydale at last.”

“Because she’s sick and I’m not.”

“Yes.” Mom sighed. “Because she’s sick and you’re not.”

It made sense. It wasn’t something Dawn was ever upset about; Dawn knew Buffy needed help that she didn’t ever since she’d tried to kill herself. People who were that sick needed extra help and that wasn’t anyone’s fault or problem. It was just that Dawn had already been making friends. She just hadn’t been to any sleepovers since she’d moved to Sunnydale. Back in LA she’d been going to them something like once every three months.

She tried not to think about it, but it didn’t leave her alone. The next morning, she tried to get her thoughts into words to put them down onto paper, but all she managed was, _We moved here almost three years ago. I don’t know why she doesn’t think I’m settled yet_. But journaling didn’t help. She stared down at the page and tried again. _I don’t know what she’s worried about_.

It was something she would’ve tried figuring out on a bike ride, except it’d started raining hard enough to be uncomfortable. She went to the basement instead, where she had another moment of experiencing the sight of something she’d never seen before. Even if Dru called her down ahead of time and said everything was fine, it still felt like she shouldn’t have walked in on what she saw. Especially not with all the noises Spike was making.

She’d never seen him get his hair bleached before. Right now, he was sitting on a folding chair in front of the big laundry sink. He didn’t have a shirt on, but at least he was wearing jeans. His head was tilted back over the rim, his eyes were closed, and Dru was working her rubber-gloved hands over his head and through his hair and he was making all sorts of soft, quiet happy noises. Groans and moans, and sometimes something that was almost a purr. Dawn knew from reading all the words on the boxes at the drugstore that getting your hair bleached didn’t feel that good, but he looked like he was having fun. Even when he winced or made a hard sound, he kept smiling. Dru kept talking to him, little songs and bigger words Dawn couldn’t hear from across the room, as she worked the chemicals into his hair and over his skin and twirled her hands through his hair. Dawn sat at the table and didn’t really want to leave but didn’t want to just sit there and hear her friends doing something that sounded almost like they were having sex. It looked private and fun enough for that.

It wasn’t like Dawn ever thought it was naturally that color – she knew hair came out of the head with whatever pigment the follicles produced and she’d seen his darker roots growing out before, usually just a little and every so often a bit more than that, and then they’d be gone again, everything back to that same shade of glow-in-the-dark white. She’d just never thought about what went into making it all happen.

She turned away and went to look at the bookshelves. Dru’s doll was sitting in its usual place on its regular shelf, doing its job of strange and adorable lookout. Nobody touched it but her. Dawn had found out the hard way nobody touched Spike’s little arrangements but him – he’d been folding sheets and _squawked_ at her to not touch anything, leave it where it was, and she’d put the pebble down only for him to come over and put it back in the one spot it was supposed to go. Pebbles, pieces of glass and plastic, a matchbook, a couple of dried leaves, nails and screws and feathers. Bits of _stuff_ that was there because, at least in Spike’s mind, this was where it all belonged. Not the best use of bookshelves to Dawn’s mind, but at least there were a few books to let them serve their real and honest purpose.

“Hey,” she said, loud enough for Dru to look at her, “can I read one of your books?” Spike waved a hand at her, which Dru said meant yes. Not that there was much to choose from; there was so little on that one shelf she almost wanted to head upstairs just to get something. There was a book about vampires, a book of poems, and a lot of empty space. A few cheap paperbacks weren’t much company for the other books and didn’t look like they’d be as much fun to read. They looked like they’d come from a bin at the thrift store or a library sale, not an actual bookstore like the other two did. There were a lot of poems running down the pages, one right after another, not just one poem per page like Dawn was used to seeing, and the vampire book had stories from all over the world, not just Europe, but also Asia and Africa and North and South America. They looked like books worth carrying around, but they were still just two books. Even if Spike could reread the same thing over and over and still be fine, he probably still wanted something else. And if all he and Dru had was bargain bin paperbacks –

“Hey,” Dawn said again, “you guys want to go to the library sometime?”

A year ago, they’d have left as soon as Spike’s hair was done. Right now, they had to wait until Dru and Spike had some free time, which meant they couldn’t go until Saturday. It’d rained a bit throughout the week, but it was clear when they took thirty minutes to walk what Dawn could’ve biked in maybe ten and stepped through the two sets of sliding doors into the Sunnydale Public Library.

“Have you guys been here yet?”

“Few times,” Spike said. “Place to be and not get chased out of. Never with anyone willing to offer to get us anything before, though. What’s the hard limit on what we can borrow?”

“I don’t know. But anything we check out we’ve got to carry home, so maybe don’t get carried away.” She’d have to remember to tell Buffy that one. “Maybe – three? Just to start with.”

The children’s section Thanksgiving decorations had come down. Dawn wondered if the librarians liked the time between Thanksgiving and December when all the walls were empty, or if they couldn’t wait for the holiday season to start so they could put up all the Christmas-Hanukkah-non-denominational-wintertime stuff. Not that Sunnydale really had a winter, but it got dark out by six, and that was pretty good reason to hunker inside and get cozy. It also meant – no, it _didn’t_ mean not a whole lot of browsing time, because she had two adult chaperones to help get her home safe after dark, and _that_ meant reading big photo books in the map room until closing time if she wanted to, or settling into one of the children’s room bean bag chairs with a couple of the Jane Yolen _Here There Be_ books. Halloween might have come and gone, but when it got dark out this early, it was definitely the right time of year for witches and ghost stories. The unicorns and dragons she decided to take home, and with them tucked under her arm, she went to find her friends.

Spike had a few books tucked under his arm, too, and was busy flipping through the CDs, his face serious and concerned. “Anything good in there?” Dawn teased.

“Turns out, yeah,” he said, either ignoring or not realizing she’d been joking. Dawn couldn’t always tell with Spike. “You said three, and I hope that’s just three books, because if there’s room for more on your library card there’s a few things here worth taking home today. Plenty of stuff your Mum would love, too.” He looked at her and wiggled up his eyebrows. “Don’t think I’m saying she’s got bad taste. I’m only saying I don’t always like listening to what she puts on as much as she does, is all. Your Mum knows what she likes and isn’t afraid to tell the world, and that’s no mean feat.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. Just look at what she named your sister.”

“Buffy? What’s that got –”

“Hey!” He pulled out a CD. “They’ve got – oh, bugger,” he flipped it over and read the back, his smile fading. “It’s the import version. Don’t know why I bothered hoping.”

“What’s wrong with it?” She took it from his hands. The back cover had the track listing and some British policemen in the pointy helmets chasing after some people; the front had three guys all upset and angry in black-and-white standing by brick walls in what could’ve been an alleyway or just an old building, green all around and the band’s name written in bright, jagged orange.

“Nothing’s _wrong_ , it’s still good and you can’t go wrong with anything that’s got Hammersmith on it, it’s just the original album had such a good strong idea of what it _wanted_ to be that you don’t hardly find these days. There’s almost nothing you can touch being done now. I don’t care what you like, or what it is, just listen to something you can touch. I don’t much care for your Mum’s taste in music but at least she’s got the decency to listen to something solid every so often.” He took the CD back, looked at it a moment longer, then thrust it into her hands so fast she almost dropped it. “Here. You wanted something good, give this a listen.”

“Okay.”

Dru breezed by, holding two big books in her arms in front of her like she was walking down a school hallway. “What’ve we got here?”

“Fixing the ache for something solid to listen to,” Spike said, going back to flipping through the shelves to inspect each CD one by one. “Who do you miss most? They might have them if we hope hard enough.”

“If they have any –”

“Look, I’m not saying it’s not _good_ music they’re turning out in places like the East Bay scene right about now, they’re doing solid work in Seattle, up and down the coast, but solid’s not enough for getting to the real heart and point of the movement.” Dawn looked at Spike, who didn’t look away from the CDs, and at Dru, who smiled and rolled her eyes; Dawn nodded, and Spike kept on talking without paying attention to either of them. “It’s more than just going hard and fast, more than just screaming because you want to go loud. If there’s no fear there’s no bloody _point_. Fear’s the beating heart of punk. More than anger – anyone can go angry, it’s easy to go angry, it’s taking your fear and making it your strength that gives the music meaning.”

“Okay,” Dawn said to pretend like she was paying attention. She ended up checking out eight books and twice that many CDs, having to rearrange everything in her backpack to make sure it all zipped up enough she wouldn’t worry about anything falling out even with Spike and Dru carrying the big sets of star charts and bird photos. It wasn’t closing time when they left, but it was still pretty late in the day. Spike had looped around through a lot of stuff like how bands were the only place where men cooperated with each other to get right back to being able to touch music, which didn’t really make sense – marching bands and big concerts, maybe, but that was getting into big sound waves like jet engine sonic booms, not stuff that went into your head because you listened to it. She’d stopped really listening after the first block.

Then out of nowhere a goose honked right next to her, loud and sharp enough she jumped and blushed. And _glared_ when she saw Spike and Dru smiling at her. Dru shifted her books so she could point up at the sky. Dawn followed her finger to see a few late migrators making their way south, just barely visible in the sunset. Then Spike honked again, sounding just like one of the birds in flight. This time, Dawn knew it was coming, and could enjoy it.

“What else can you do?”

He licked his lips and did a crow. Dru cheered for him to do it again, and Spike went seagull, magpie, blue jay, hawk – not pretending, not like a little kid playing in a costume, really _going_ like them. Like he’d really practiced to say it right.

“Can you do accents?” asked Dawn. “Or just animals?”

“If I do one at a time, yeah.”

“You should hear him try for American,” Dru said. He glared at her, then threw his free arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to kiss her cheek as she laughed. The two of them held hands all the way home, and just as they all crossed the street to Revello Drive Dru peered to the sky and said, “On your toes, they’ve started to arrive.”

“What?” But Dawn followed Dru’s gaze and saw she was talking about the stars. “Oh.” It wasn’t full dark yet, but more than enough for them to start being seen right now. In Los Angeles, she hadn’t been able to see any, not unless it was a once-a-year really clear night.

“Not so troublesome to see here, not hardly compared to some other places we’ve been. Even the planets get lost in all our light, sometimes, and should that happen, never mind the stars.”

“They’re good to see,” said Spike. Dru hummed, crossing her arms so she was hugging her books to her chest.

“I know Orion,” Dawn said, hoping she was doing it right. “There’s the Scorpion, and the big and little dippers. All the zodiac signs, but I don’t know any of the stars _in_ them besides the North Star. I haven’t really –”

“Betelgeuse, Rigel, Bellatrix, Mintaka, Alnilam, Alnitak, Saiph,” Dru recited. “And Meissa and Hatsya beside.”

“Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice?” Dawn giggled, but Dru didn’t laugh at her joke. She might not have even known it _was_ a joke.

“We could head back to the old haunt for a night, love,” Spike said. “It’s probably all just as we left it. See about getting a better view from the rooftop, remember climbing out there?”

“I recall,” Dru said, not looking at him, craning her head back and turning around to look at more of the night sky. She sighed. “I was going to study them, you know.”

“I didn’t know that,” said Dawn, because with Dru sometimes you just had to never mind being polite and just go with what she was saying.

“Yes, I was. Them and their lives. What it takes for light to reach us through all the darkness in between. Not my family’s business – the business of business is what they did, and I was expected to follow alongside. Not to have my own passions, much as I wished to, skilled as I might have been.”

“Wouldn’t they like to see where you are now,” Spike said. “Still with your eyes to the stars.” He didn’t say it in a teasing or mean way. Maybe sardonic – no, that wasn’t it, either. That wasn’t the right word for how Spike sounded looking at Drusilla right now. Kind of affectionate and sad and loving and happy all at the same time.

Dru didn’t say anything else. Spike told Dawn they’d be out a while longer. She gave them the rest of their books and said good-night and headed up to her room.

Door closed, shoes off, she dropped her backpack down and got out her Discman. She looked through the pile of CDs, trying to decide where to start. Eleven different albums from eight different musicians and bands. He’d picked out more than enough punk-type stuff, but not all of it – some soft-looking women, a couple other bands, the three guys standing by the brick wall. No best-of collections, just albums. Not much like what either of her parents usually liked, or even Buffy. It wasn’t like she’d pick the wrong place to start if they were all worth listening to. She still wanted to start off right.

So she put on her headphones, settled against the bed, and closed her eyes. She shuffled the plastic cases around in her backpack until she couldn’t tell which one was which, just the right way to open them and put the CD into the Discman. She closed the case, set her shoulders back, and hit play. And then there was nothing to do but listen to something big and wonderful that she’d never heard before.


	16. midnight sky, an early day

Joyce made a point of not discussing rent when she’d first invited them into the basement, and she’d kept that policy even after they’d managed gainful employment. She’d seen a few signs of their income coming in, like bottles of hydrogen peroxide she knew she hadn’t bought sitting next to the rest of the household cleaning supplies in the basement. They were all small signs, though, and she knew them not having to pay for room and board helped them keep a lot of what they earned. Which she knew still wasn’t enough for them to live off on their own. She was going to let things stay as they were for as long as she could.

And it wasn’t just because she was happy to leave laundry off her weekly chore list.

They walked like they had their feet underneath them for the first time since she’d met them. She remembered Buffy learning to walk again after the hospital, after the medication issues were settled. It wasn’t the same, not as far as she knew; it was still the closest comparison she could think of. They still wouldn’t eat upstairs unless the girls were gone, but Joyce had come to accept that; now, with the girls down in San Diego for the winter break, the three of them were sitting at the table, honestly talking about their working days.

“Twelve!” She laughed as they both chuckled along. “I couldn’t believe it myself when I saw them. Honestly, three extra boxes I could probably manage to move by the next big show, maybe four with the right advertising campaign and cheap stamps, but _twelve_ new boxes of postcards, what am I, the MOMA here? When Brenda realized what she’d done, she was about ready to fall on her own sword if that’d make it up to me.”

“But what she’s done was forgivable,” Drusilla said.

“Yeah. It’s not a huge problem – more of a hassle, really. It won’t be a _huge_ blow to next year’s budget. We’ll just take it as a reasonably priced lesson in having people double-check these things in the future. Incidentally, do either of you know anyone you’d like to mail something to? I’ve got plenty of extra postcards lying around.”

“No, we’re fine on that front,” said Spike.

“The offer’s going to stay open for at least another month, if you change your mind.”

“We’ll let you know if we do.”

Their day didn’t have any kind of that mix-up, just more of their usual hard work of scrubbing toilets and mopping floors, and after dinner, when they’d cleared the table and were helping her fill the dishwasher, they brought up what was apparently phase two of their big life plan. Which they also needed her help with – again looking to her professional experience – to navigate systems and answer questions they’d never been asked before. Questions like _mailing address_ and _home phone_ because, as Drusilla explained, they were only borrowing Joyce’s own and didn’t want to overstep.

“It’s fine to use this address,” Joyce said. “Was there – what else was bothering you?”

“When they say _reliable transportation_ , does that have to be something I own myself, or would anything that gets me there qualify?” Spike asked.

“You can just say yes to that one. As long as you’ve got some way to get there.” They’d walked into offices and up to front desks and asked politely, and got rewarded for their efforts with stacks of applications to fill out and pin their hopes on and hope would at least get them a polite rejection. They weren’t going out into fields to pick tomatoes and peaches or heading into restaurant kitchens to wash dishes; they could get jobs like that just by showing up. These were serious jobs they were hunting after, the sort that ended up with 1099s and regular performance reviews. “I think the library has job hunting classes. I know I’ve seen that advertised on bulletin boards there.” She smiled as gently as she could. “We could go down and check this weekend.”

“Don’t you need a library card to avail yourself of those services?”

“If you want to check books out, sure,” Joyce said. “But you wouldn’t need one to walk in and sit down at one of their classes. But if you’re worried, all you need for a card is some ID and a piece of mail. I’m sure Buffy and Dawn would be happy to send you postcards from San Diego, and I know passports qualify as valid forms of ID, so if you really – is something wrong?”

Drusilla whimpered, gently. Spike put his hand over Drusilla’s before looking back at Joyce. “Potentially.”

“You’ve got passports, right?” He looked away from her. “Right?”

“We’d never needed them,” Drusilla said, almost a whisper. “We’d had someone to make a path for us through all the gates, keep us safe from anyone asking us for proof we were ourselves.”

“Wait a minute, you’re telling me you don’t have passports?” Joyce was glad she was sitting down. “But you got here through – how did you get here?”

“Like Dru just said,” Spike said, an edge on his voice. “We knew someone who got us through everything, everywhere. She was one of those people lucky enough to know everyone, have connections to powers all over the world. I never understood how she kept everything up and running, but she did, and since we were with her all the time, if she wanted to head somewhere, we came along for the ride. She wasn’t about to let a little thing like us not having passports stop us from getting to a party. When we parted ways a few years back, it was here, in the States, and we’ve never tried to get home or find anything like what we’re looking for now, so it’s never been a concern before.” He sighed. “Besides, if we _want_ to go back to England, we’ll just find the nearest consulate, say we’ve been traveling illegally, and get deported back home for our trouble.”

“That, well, that sounds like it’d solve the problem,” Joyce said as diplomatically as she could.

“Not that we would, unless we had to get out in an emergency,” said Drusilla. “We’d prefer not running risk of being taken away from each other.”

“What do you mean?”

“I could deal with prison, if it came to that,” Spike said. “But like Dru just said. What would happen to her? Wherever they’d put her, would anyone else know how to take care of her? No. Nobody else does, nobody in the world. It’s just me, me alone, no one else ever looked out for her before. They put us apart, and there’s no one left around for her. I’m not risking anything for that.”

“That’s not even getting to the worst of it.” Drusilla laced her fingers together with Spike’s. “He gets lost without me, and they’d take me away from him. Lock me up somewhere, give him no chance of finding someplace soft and safe, leave him adrift in the world. There’d never been anyone before me who’s guided him. No matter how long we’ve been together, they’d keep us apart. I know that’s not just the voices whispering fears into me, it’s what would truly happen. It’s what they do to things like us.” She managed a sneer. “You know we’re not allowed to be in love.”

If Buffy said those sorts of things, Joyce would try to bring her back into reality. Explain the unlikelihood of her fears using facts and examples from her life to help shore up her mental defenses, hold back the worst of her illness intruding into her healthy mind. But that strategy wasn’t going to help with either of the people sitting across from her at the dining room table, Spike not looking her in the eye and Drusilla still holding onto his hand.

“I don’t think it’ll have come to that,” Joyce told them. “We’ll do what we can to keep that from happening. But do you have any legally issued identification, anything whatsoever? Even if it isn’t a passport. Just something that says you’re who you say you are.”

A few minutes later, Joyce realized she didn’t know why she’d expected anything other than what she’d been given. Except that it was a little surprising to find out Drusilla’s parents had actually named her that, and it did feel good to finally learn his given name wasn’t Spike.

Intake forms from one hospital with a doctor’s official diagnostic paperwork, and a university ID issued almost twenty years ago. Drusilla Keeble was staring straight ahead at the camera, eyes alive even on the grainy, faded black-and-white, the jut of her face implying a spirit that wasn’t going to stand for this treatment even as it was being subjugated by circumstance. William Pratt was smiling, his face open and cheerful, brown hair curling over his forehead and glasses high on his nose, probably the only person in the world to ever be happy to have his picture taken for an ID card.

Joyce had her suspicions about the exact circumstances Spike and Drusilla lived inside. She knew it went beyond homelessness and mental illness, but past that, she didn’t want to make any undue speculations. It was mostly suspicions. Not that their choice to reside in the abandoned canning factory itself hadn’t been a big sign pointing towards a host of problems she knew couldn’t be solved just by giving them a bed and access to indoor plumbing. Or even steady employment. Begin to fix them, yes, but not even regular showers were a panacea. On some level, she felt _relieved_ to know the full depth and extent of what she’d invited into her house even as a completely new set of problems arose from that knowledge.

“I don’t think this is quite what they’re asking for.”

“Yeah, I didn’t really figure that,” Spike said.

On the plus side, such as it was, she knew people in LA that would’ve said insanity was a fair price to pay for skin as good as Drusilla’s. She knew they’d also be upset Drusilla was a good few years older than Spike, for whatever difference that made, and if nothing else, it felt good to remember another set of reasons why she’d moved out of Los Angeles.

The gallery’s janitor had been there when she’d started and Joyce hadn’t had reason or need or want to replace him. But she knew the questions she’d ask if things came to that, and used that to give the people living in her basement some idea of what they’d be expected to answer at their upcoming job interviews.

She’d worked a total of four jobs in her life. Before she became a gallery manager, she’d been new acquisitions manager, assistant to the acquisitions manager, and last of all, coffee shop employee – or barista, which was what they were calling that position nowadays. She’d been handed a fancy shirt for that long-ago grad school post after she’d promised she could show up on time four days a week, got an interview through one of her professors, and still shook her head when she thought about the good fortune behind her promotion and the timing behind her current position.

Even if she’d never had to fight her way through finding employment, she’d definitely lived through times when she’d wished she could retreat to a basement and close the door behind her to shut out the world. She really couldn’t blame them for that sort of hiding, not when she sometimes still wanted it so much herself.

-

It wasn’t all too long ago that Buffy wouldn’t have described herself as someone people knew – classmates and friends, by all means, but people who were _people_ , not hardly. But now here she was, somebody who’d made a couple of phone calls and met with old acquaintances in LA who’d themselves gotten in touch with people they knew who’d made more phone calls and arranged meetings of their own to manage to get someone from one of the top law firms in the whole entire state, someone who _just so happened_ to specialize in immigration law, to take on Spike and Dru’s case. Somehow Buffy had become a person that knew people. Let your people call my people, I know a guy who knows a guy, I’ll make a few calls. All those great movie lines actually coming true for once. She was even the sort of person that people did favors for: the lawyer was doing the case pro bono due to certain extenuating circumstances regarding the individuals involved. And probably because of some careful words exchanged in those phone calls. Buffy hadn’t asked and didn’t much want to, not when she could rightly focus on being someone that people knew.

On a smaller scale, with a lot fewer degrees of separation, she was why Spike and Dru were meeting Giles. She’d suggested it to him first, framing it with the argument that he’d already gone through the process Spike and Dru were hopefully going to undertake in the near future, and it’d be helpful for them to talk to someone who’d come out the other side and could give them an insider’s idea of what they were in for.

“Just sketch the idea. Let them know the kinds of questions they’ll be asked. I know it’s not exactly the same thing as what you did, what with you coming here legally and all, but there’s got to be enough commonalities you could say _something_.”

“Given what you’ve described of their situation, a warning might be the most I can offer for them.”

“As long as it’s coming ahead of time.”

He didn’t seem convinced that anything he could do would help. It didn’t stop him from showing up a couple nights later, tie and tweed all in place, attaché case full of what she hoped were magical papers that could sweep all relevant problems away. She’d done a little reading in her own time at the public library on how this sort of thing usually went down and she knew it wasn’t going to be anything close to fun.

Still, Giles shook Spike’s hand, and Drusilla’s, and seemed to be putting in the effort to look happy to be there. Especially once the three of them started talking. Buffy couldn’t tell which one of them got the most cheer from finally hearing someone speak correctly, _properly_ , vowels in all the right places at last. She covered for herself by making tea for everyone and trying not to listen in from the edge of the kitchen. Dawn and Mom were upstairs, out of the way, and that’s where she knew she should be while the three of them talked except it wasn’t. Like, at all.

She only put three mugs on the tray, though. It was the best nonverbal don’t-mind-me she could think of.

“Oh, yes, thank you, Buffy,” Giles said as she handed him the little creamer jug. “Now, even with your steady employment from a state university, that’s not quite enough to qualify –”

And that was her cue to start tuning out again. If high school was good for anything, it was how to pull back away from the room she was in, let human speech turn into animal sounds and just listen to the shape of things, not the specific words being used. It didn’t make her proud or happy, but she couldn’t make herself leave and didn’t know another way she could stand to stay in the room.

“You still have your doctor’s paperwork?” That got her back to humanity straightaway.

“Every little piece,” Dru said. “You want me to go fetch it?”

“No, that’s quite all right. But it’s good you still have it. I can’t imagine it not being helpful at some point in this process – I’m fairly certain there’s provisions for mental illness that I should advise you to take advantage of, if you can.”

“When we next talk I’ll tell all the voices they’ve finally made themselves useful.”

“Yes, that sounds like, yes, moving on,” he took off his glasses to squeeze his nose. Buffy couldn’t blame him; Dru tended to have that effect. He recovered fast, though, not even polishing his glasses before putting them back on and returned to outlining what the two of them might expect once the lawyers got involved. It went on for the better part of two and a half hours, Spike and Dru coming up with more and more questions as they got used to talking to him, and Giles’ own librarian side came in strong, always staying patient with their questions, trying to find answers and not afraid to look things up if he had to. Compared to a horde of high school seniors desperate to get the required number of sources for their research papers, a couple of crazy people asking him about immigration law probably didn’t seem like that big a deal.

She still made sure to thank him over and over that night, and again at school the next day.

“No, really, it wasn’t any trouble. I can assure you of that. God knows I’d have liked to meet with someone willing to talk to me about the process before I began it myself.” He scanned in another returned textbook copy of _The Grapes of Wrath_ with a satisfying beep while Buffy did the same. “You did a very kind thing, inviting them into your home.”

“Mom did the actual inviting. But – yeah. Thanks.”

“Well.” He scanned in another beep. “Yes, well.” Buffy waited, listening. She knew what that sort of faint self-echo meant, and it wouldn’t take long before he verbalized on the subject. Another half-dozen copies and he was shaking his head and talking quietly even for a library textbook room with just two people in it. “I admit that on some level I’m astonished they’ve managed to stay alive this long.”

“I think they are, too.”

“Yes,” he said softly. He picked up another copy, the third-to-last book of the stack, then put it down and turned towards her. “I didn’t want to mention it last night, and I don’t mean any offense to the man or to you, but that Spike, it was – I’m trying to think of the most delicate way to put this, how he quite reminded me of a nephew of mine.”

“I thought you were an only child.”

“I am. My apologies, it’s not exactly a common British convention but it’s how my family’s always described things. This nephew, he’s the child of a cousin twice removed, and as his father’s in my generation, nephew’s simply the way he’s referred to.” Buffy nodded, to let him know she was listening. “I did quite like his mother, and I keep thinking I ought to get back in touch with them – about the only branch I remained on speaking terms with, but that’s beside the point, which is that my nephew, he’s rather reminiscent of your Spike. I remember his parents discussing the possibilities of doctors, and diagnoses, when he was a child, though if anything came of those discussions I can’t recall. I can’t say what it is, exactly, Wesley’s quite a different person, except…it’s strange, but there’s something in how they both look at people that has your Spike reminding me of him.” He nodded again, looking like he was trying to find a suitable concluding argument, and settled for a sort of hushed sigh.

Buffy let the quiet settle in. They finished scanning and loaded up the cart. She pushed and he walked alongside. “They’re just a phone call away,” she said, wheeling the books home. “That’s not that far.”

“No, I suppose not,” Giles said, still all hushed. “Not very far at all.”


	17. when the record lady said

When the brass tacks were gotten down to and the university was removed from consideration, Sunnydale was a reasonably small town with only one high school and a fairly stable student population. Even if Xander couldn’t put names to faces for everyone in the G through K surname SAT-taking session, he was at least able to recognize their basic shapes and make decent guesses where he knew them from. Except for this one girl, which was a cliché that happened to come true this once. He hadn’t recognized the mystery girl and didn’t get the chance to ask her why that was. Which, at the time, was a bigger concern than trying to do well on the essay portion.

But Sunnydale being a tiny black hole with a nigh-inescapable gravitational pull, he spotted her a few weeks later on an otherwise unremarkable Wednesday when she came to collect her final score. Why they didn’t mail them out, he couldn’t guess, but he was glad to get the chance to speak with her, dawdling and taking his time to slip into line right behind her, and get her name of _Jenkins, Anya, please and thank you_ , when she asked for her envelope. 

“Hoping for a good solid four digits?” he asked as they walked off the quad.

“Oh, I’m not terribly concerned with my score,” she said breezily, barely glancing his way. “I know it’ll be nice if I get a high one, but I also know all it _really_ measures are my test-taking abilities and talents at working under quick, intense pressure, and I know how I manage at those already. Mostly I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. A friend of mine kept going on and on about how stressed they were making everyone and how much pressure his brother was under to take them this year and how much trouble they were going to be for him next year, and from the way he described everything, it sounded like it’d be kind of fun.” 

She looked at him and he felt funny – a good funny, because she was looking at _him_ , all her attention on him, and this Jenkins Anya please and thank you lady was a pretty good-looking representative of her gender and maybe he was about ready to move on from Cordelia now.

“Did you take them to try to get a high score?” she asked. “And what’s your name?”

When he told Willow about it that night, cooking dinner at her house because her parents were out of town until Sunday, she wrinkled up her nose as she added a dash more thyme to the tomato sauce bubbling on the stove. 

“No, and from what you’re telling me I’m pretty sure I’d know if I’ve met her. She sounds weird enough to be memorable.”

“Definitely a polite way to describe her.” The timer dinged and he grabbed a couple of oven mitts to drain the pasta. “Granted, we only talked for twenty minutes, but she makes a distinctive first impression. She kind of made me think of Cordelia a bit, but…nah.”

“No, what is it?”

“It’s like, Cordelia knows what not to say and then decides to deliberately ignore the concept of tactfulness. I think with Anya, tact’s something she needs to remember.” Xander gave himself a single moment of his time on earth to think about what his old girlfriend might say about his present crush, what she’d say about him getting a new crush so quickly, and then decided to move on with his life, beginning with eating a meal made by real human hands for the first time in a few days. The reality of his own place could _not_ come quick enough. 

It turned out that when Anya called him that weekend, he’d been working on making that happen, hauling lumber across the hardware store’s parking lot when she left her message. Thankfully, neither of his parents checked the machine before he got home.

“How’d you even get my number?” he finally asked her Tuesday afternoon, going for ketchup instead of sauerkraut on his hot dog just to play it safe.

“It’s listed in the phone book. I’d thought about just showing up but I was worried that might be too forward.” She’d gone for mustard.

“Right.”

“You don’t need to ask me for mine if you want to call me. My home phone’s listed too, and I don’t have a private line.”

“I appreciate you letting me know.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, giving him another one of those all-attention funny-feeling-making smiles. She made good smiles.

As they ate their dogs and sipped their sodas, she told him that she’d been homeschooled since kindergarten, which was why he hadn’t recognized her; that she’d been taking both regular and advanced classes at UC Sunnydale since she was fourteen and was on course to graduate by the time she was twenty; that she was hoping to go to Stanford for her master’s degree in economics and business management because it was the best way she knew of to study capitalism; that while she didn’t meet Willow’s or even Buffy’s score, she’d done well enough to be proud; and that even if she hadn’t done well she’d known the experience of taking the SAT would help her out when it came time for her to take the equivalent test to get into her dream grad school for capitalism studies.

“What’s there to study?” asked Xander. “Just sit down for a round of Monopoly and there you’ve got it. You know the lady invented that game to show the horrors of the system, right?”

“Yes, which I still think is delightful,” Anya said. “I’m not planning on defending it as an organized system in any way. I’d like to master it, of course, really get ahead in life in the best venue I’ve got available for me to do so, but it’s the collective delusion of the system I find so compelling about the whole enterprise – if you’ll pardon that.”

“Remind me to introduce you to a good friend of mine. You’d like her. And before I do, mind elaborating on ‘collective delusion’?”

“Certainly.” Anya grinned, and Xander felt the immediate need for a seatbelt and crash helmet. “It’s that it’s all representative value. There’s no real _meaning_ there, there’s no real _value_ in anything anymore, not in the money we’ve got circulating these days. Hardly anyone’s on any solid gold or silver or other precious metal standard, a penny’s not copper and a quarter’s not silver but we’ve all agreed that these objects still represent the concept of value, one or twenty-five cents’ worth of value. But the object itself, it’s meaningless without that philosophy behind it. It’s just metal, or a paper-fiber polyweave, or a piece of paper with a couple of signatures on it, or even some computer code. And it’s fascinating how nobody thinks about what makes any of it real! We could put the US on the pork belly standard and we’d have a stronger system for understanding the concept of inherent value. Not that we should. The illusion’s a lot easier for everyone to carry around in their heads.”

“Huh,” Xander said. “I guess I’ve never really thought about money that way.”

“Don’t feel bad. Most people haven’t.”

And that was how, in quick succession and by the time they said goodbye, Xander realized two new fundamental truths about the world. First, Anya managed to effortlessly outclass him in every conceivable way. And second, without meaning to, Xander found himself in a relationship with her the way he assumed most people realized there was no outrunning an avalanche. Not all at once, and not right away, but there was no escaping it.

Not that he minded in either case.

Anya was a lot like Cordelia in a few ways, and nothing like her in a lot more, but the thing he was gladdest they both had in common was that neither of them bothered to make him guess how they were feeling. If he said anything to piss them off, or hurt their feelings, he knew right away. No hesitation on their parts or wondering on his. Just straightforward honesty, which was so much easier to deal with than habitual hostile ambiguity.

He waited until prom night – dipping into his apartment funds to get Cordelia a farewell gift, taking a few last moments with his first serious girlfriend for a final parting on what he hoped were good terms, both of them meaning it when they wished they’d never see each other again for different reasons and what Xander knew was unequal sadness he still hoped was in his favor – to introduce his new girlfriend to everyone. At that point, he and Anya had gone on a total of four real dates as Xander measured things and she hadn’t gotten any less weird. Not in any way he could really warn Buffy and Willow for, not specifically, just a general warning to be aware they’d be dealing with someone who’d only learned how humans were supposed to talk to each other well into adulthood and wasn’t used to all the fine details yet. She was nice, sure, but she wasn’t exactly the smoothest possible conversationalist.

Anya stuck out her hand and introduced herself. Buffy shook it and returned the favor. Anya nodded politely and told Buffy she had a nice name.

“That’s it? Just, it’s a nice name?”

“Yes,” Anya said, looking a little perturbed at being questioned with the sort of gentle ferocity only Buffy could manage.

To which Buffy right away turned to Xander and said with a full-sunshine smile, “You can keep this one.”

Anya looked back and forth between Xander to Buffy, and maybe that was something Xander could’ve warned for specifically, that she didn’t always know when something was a joke. “But can I keep him?” she asked, all the humor in how she didn’t know it was supposed to be funny.

“He’s all yours in any and every romantic-type situation you want to have him,” Buffy promised. “Can I grab you a drink?”

“I’d like some lemonade if there’s any available,” Anya said, and Xander finally let himself unclench a bit. If Buffy liked her right away, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Everyone else seemed to take to her fine, and when casual invitations for hangouts were issued, it didn’t take long for them to be issued to him and Anya, not just him.

After graduation, it took more work than just saying _let’s meet after seventh period_ to hang out with his friends. He really had to make the time, carve it out of his schedule and shifts so he could head over to Buffy’s to spend time with everyone before she had to mail herself and Dawn off to LA again for the summer – everyone being Anya, Willow and Oz. They showed up not much later, then Dawn made her way downstairs, and for a little while, maybe an hour or so, it was some nice downtime from life. Nothing to do and nowhere to be except with friends and other kinds of company.

Then Spike and Drusilla showed up. It was both true they were in Buffy’s house and that against all sense and reason she actually liked the two escaped mental patients who slept in her basement, but those facts didn’t mean she had to ask them to _join_ Xander and everyone else in the living room. Especially when she said, “We were just talking about you,” when they most definitely hadn’t been.

Drusilla whispered something to Spike, who whispered something back and kissed her, goddamn _full on the lips_ kissed her and sat on the arm of the couch all in Xander’s personal space bubble while she went off to the basement. More than close enough for Xander to smell the leather on the coat he was fairly certain the guy slept in and the rotten stink of fresh cigarette smoke. “So what’s everyone saying about me?”

“Just that thanks to you and Drusilla and now Anya, I’m finally running out of fingers and might have to move onto a second hand to count everyone who doesn’t say something about my name. It might even be this decade if it keeps up. Oh, right, Anya, this is Spike, Spike, Anya.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” she said, reaching across Xander to offer her hand to Spike, who didn’t seem to notice Xander trying to become one with the cushions as he shook Anya’s hand. There wasn’t enough space to scoot over and let him sit, but Xander knew he’d rather have Spike sit on the edge and push into his personal space boundary that way rather than actually share the couch with him. 

“Pleasure meeting you as well,” Spike said, and Xander knew he was in for at least another ten minutes of waiting before he could leave without being rude about it. He did his best to not make a fuss as they talked about nothing much, keeping his mouth shut for most of it, and trying to focus on the good scent-memories of his late Uncle Hal from Sacramento that stale cigarette smoke and old leather always brought right back to him. It wasn’t as hard as he thought it’d be. Just sit back and look at Anya while she talked to Spike, who probably was focusing on the wallpaper instead of actually looking at anyone straight-on, flicking his fingers inside his coat sleeves like he thought nobody was watching. Better just to keep his eyes on Anya and listen to her talk.

Then Anya asked him a question flat-out, and he had to have her repeat it. 

“We’re conducting a survey on what constitutes everyone’s personal definition of luxury.” Anya leaned into Xander’s side. “Mine was built-in bookcases and a reading alcove.”

“Dru and I’ve talked about this a few times. What our dream life’d be like, if we got handed a couple million dollars and told to spend it as we liked.” Spike smiled. “She said, anyplace nice but it’d have to have a bathtub. Big, fancy English bath for a full-body soak.”

“For California, that’s definitely luxury,” Buffy said. “I’m still going with living alone with a view of the ocean. Make that a balcony where I can sit and watch the ocean. And sunsets. West coast views only.”

“If luxury can be anything, I’m going with eating in fancy restaurants, the kind that serve you cheese off a cart. And not having to look at the prices.” Xander shook his head at the dream. “Just being able to order whatever you want and not worrying about it.”

“Nice!” Dawn giggled. “Mine’s still a house big enough for people to get lost in. It’d be so big that if I had a party and invited a lot of people, they’d be able to wander around and spend time alone by themselves before getting back to the real party action.”

“Mani-pedis.” Oz leaned back in his chair. “My moms do them every few months. I know they’re ordinary, but people pampering you like that? It’s always been fashionably opulent.” 

“First-class plane tickets,” Willow added. “Not emergency ‘there’s a funeral and only first class seats are available’ kind of tickets. I mean the bought in advance because I’ll be flying up front with fancy cake and drinks in real glass because I can kind of ticket. And what about you?”

“Me?” Spike said.

“Yeah, you’re the one who’d already talked about it,” Xander said. He kept his eyes focused on Spike’s face. “Don’t leave us hanging. When you picture living in luxury, what’s the image?”

He didn’t even bother looking at Xander, but at least he smiled. “Listening to whatever music I want, whenever I want.”

“I thought you said you’d talked about this. We’re discussing _luxury_ here.” Something in Xander’s tone finally got Spike look at him. 

“I know. That’s what it’d be, for me.” His voice had an edge to it now. “Because I’ve been to giant parties and eaten cheese off carts and flown first class, and they’re all nice enough, but when I think what I’d want, it’s music played as I’d like to hear it.”

“When’d you go to parties like that?” Dawn asked. “Where were they?”

“Plenty of places. London, Copenhagen, Hong Kong, New York, up in Oakland and Berkeley just a couple of years ago. Haven’t been to one in a while, what with hardly knowing anyone in Sunnydale, much less someone who’d host one.”

“You’re saying because you’ve _lived_ big you’re dreaming small now,” Xander said lightly enough everyone would know to take it as a joke. “I guess that’s one way to do it.”

Spike didn’t turn away from Xander, just kept looking at him, hardly even blinking, until he rolled his eyes and without even saying _screw this_ or whatever they said in England, probably _bugger all this to the pub_ or something, he left. Got up from the couch, walked out of the room, and didn’t look back. Because Spike never knew when something was a joke.

“What just happened?” Willow asked quietly.

“He left,” Xander sighed.

“But you can’t just _leave!_ You’ve got to excuse yourself or wait for it to be okay, not just – you can’t just get up and go like that.”

“Except you can, if you’re Spike. Sorry about that,” Buffy said to Anya, saving Xander from having to apologize for the situation. But he did anyway.

“Yeah, he’s definitely a weird one. I probably should’ve warned you he does stuff like that sometimes.”

“It’s all right,” Anya told him. “I don’t mind. I guess I would’ve liked to know beforehand, but it’s fine.”

“It is? Because I feel like I really should’ve warned you about him.”

“There’s really nothing you needed to _warn_ me for. All you needed to say is that he’s autistic.”


	18. thunderstorm, golden sands, give us war in Pakistan

Anya usually didn’t mind all eyes in a room being on her. It was generally a positive sign of impressive behavior on her part.

“Told you that he’s what now?” Xander asked.

“Autistic,” she repeated.

“What do you mean?” asked Oz.

“I mean, that he’s autistic.”

“I think we’re going to need a bit more than that,” Buffy said.

“What exactly do you need me to clarify?” This was getting out of hand and away from how she’d imagined her first interactions with her boyfriend’s other friends.

“You could start with autistic,” Xander said. “You mean, he’s going to turn out to be some sort of secret piano savant, or take Vegas by storm?”

“Right,” Willow said, “like in that movie –”

 _“No,_ not like that.” Anya doubted she’d seen the movie in question that Willow was referencing but felt fairly secure it wasn’t an accurate depiction of the details of her own life. Or Spike’s, for that matter. “Okay, the basic definition of autism, the very basic one, is that it’s a neurobiological abnormality which impacts sensory processing and social interaction.” There, the elevator pitch she’d been using since she was eleven still serving its purpose.

She looked around the room and saw Willow and Oz nod, Buffy take a moment to turn her face away from Anya and seem to consider things and then turn back, and Xander continuing to look like a confused dog. “And for those of us who didn’t take the SATs for fun, something a little more simplified?”

“Oh. All right, well, I guess…” She leaned back against the cushions, then leaned forward and shook her head. “I’m sorry. This isn’t something I’ve had to talk about in a long time so just bear with me a moment.”

“It’s okay,” Buffy said.

There was a specific sort of anger from being aware both that there were good words out there and the lacunae within her vocabulary. Knowing just some of the words she needed – no, anger wouldn’t do her any good right now. Better to focus on necessary communication before things went bad. “Autistic means a person has autism. Autism is classified by the current American Psychiatric Association as a mental – okay, actually, never mind that part. What it is, the way it manifests is always different from person to person, but there’s enough commonalities to talk about it broadly. The way being autistic works is that there’s what’s basically a disruption in input and output between the autistic person and the rest of the world. The sensory world and the social world. What gets inside isn’t always filtered or managed properly, and what comes out can be a challenge to _get_ out, or be understood, because of that. There’s more, but that’s one of the fundamental aspects of being autistic and what I think is one of the most important.” She unfocused her eyes and scanned around the room, trying to hit everyone’s general face area to appear more on-point engaged than she felt she could be right now. “Does that make sense?”

“Astonishingly enough, yes, it does,” Xander said. “And you think Spike’s autistic because…”

“Well, it’s pretty obvious from just _talking_ to him.” Xander’s original vague descriptions had been enough to raise her suspicions. Two minutes of interaction with Spike had her fairly certain, and five was enough to cement it. “Are you telling me you never picked up on it?”

“I didn’t know it was something to look for,” Dawn said. She’d pulled her arms close to her body and was staring at the rug.

“It’d never occurred to me. I don’t think anyone thought of that,” Buffy said.

“If I can – I don’t mean this in a rude way,” said Willow, “but what made you think to notice something?”

“I didn’t think. It’s just there to be seen.”

“Let me start over,” Willow said. Two days later, when Anya repeated the story, she had to first apologize for not quite being able to precisely replicate Willow’s inflection before continuing.

“So she asked, how did you know what to look for in the first place, what made you think autism. And I said, I’m autistic,” Anya said. “And then she asked you are, I said yes, she said I never would have guessed. So I said that’s not exactly a compliment but thank you. Which I guess was my little autistic coming-out speech. There you have it, and now they know.” She flipped onto her back to look up at her bedroom ceiling. “I’d wanted to tell Xander for a while, so that took care of that worry. I think he took things pretty well since we’re still on for Saturday night. He didn’t ask me if I was going to take Las Vegas by storm, just if there was anything he should be careful about. Have you told your friends yet?”

“Not yet,” Andrew said. Anya rolled off the bed to join him sitting on the floor. He was cross-legged, and she sprawled hers out. They’d first met by virtue of having the same speech therapist, and all four of their parents had been so delighted at the spontaneous social bonding they’d encouraged it even though it was with someone from another gender and age group. Both Anya and Andrew thought that sort of arbitrary judgment was really stupid. Anya knew Xander did, too, and most of Buffy’s other friends – maybe that was one reason it’d been easier than usual to become friendly with them.

“You should tell them sometime. See, I told mine, so I’m setting a valuable social precedent.”

“Yeah, but you had reasonable context to talk about it,” he said. “That hasn’t happened with my friends yet.”

“Then make something up. Be all, ‘hey, I was just reading about these new DSM categories and developments,’ ‘why Andrew, why might you ever do that,’ ‘you see, I’m autistic myself, so I’m interested’ – it’s easy to set things up when most people don’t always try to analyze everything they say.”

“Maybe.” He shook his head. “I’ll think about trying that. And please don’t go criticizing them again. I _like_ my other friends. They’re cool. We do cool stuff together.”

“I’m not criticizing them or your other social activities. I just think you should spend time with people that you can be comfortable around that like you for you, not just because they liked your brother first, whatever his name is.”

“Tucker.”

“Right, Tucker.” Anya had never had a genuine conversation with Tucker. She’d exchanged bland pleasantries with him a few times when she had been the one to go to Andrew’s house. They hadn’t been memorable enough for his name to stick in her head. “I assume he did fairly well on the tests himself, for all the fuss you described.”

“He’s stopped complaining about taking them and moved onto telling me how bad it’s going to be because they change every year. I can’t even re-use his study guides.”

“Which just demonstrates further evidence for my hypothesis the SATs just measure a person’s test-taking skills.”

“I know you don’t like them, but one of my other friends say they’re also focused on maintaining class and race distinctions in the US.”

“That’d be at least one specific data point I’d agree on with him.”

“Good,” Andrew said. He smiled. “If you ever happen to meet any of them, in what I imagine would be a series of strange and seemingly incidental coincidences, you could forge common grounds together about how pointless the SATs are. Especially since you didn’t even need to take them.”

“That’s true, but I did anyway. It was _voluntary_ participation in collective group activities. So let me ask you, which one of us is better at social interactions now?”

He giggled and kicked at her feet. She laughed and kicked right back.


	19. everything I love gets lost in dreams

They’d been dancing the first time Buffy ever saw them. She’d been living in Sunnydale for a few months, finally feeling like she had her feet underneath her and was walking instead of crawling. She had friends and family and people who listened, and it was one night in September that she’d seen Spike and Dru dancing together at the Bronze. At that moment, they could’ve been anyone, really, just two people dancing to the music, and she didn’t go to talk to them. They weren’t there the next time she came by, but a couple of weeks later there wasn’t any mistaking things. That was the same couple dancing together all crazy to the music, not even like nobody was watching – they’d tossed that little quip aside to dance like they knew everyone was watching and just didn’t care.

She watched them dance like that, not caring, jump-kicking their feet up into the air and stomping down on the floor, clapping, laughing, Dru somehow elegant in the chaos and Spike’s coat twirling around as they commanded the floor of the diet soda version of a real Los Angeles dance club, the sort of place she’d used to sneak into with tight pants and no bra. It was obvious to her they’d dance crazy like that anywhere because they loved dancing, and they loved dancing with each other, and she’d hoped that from talking to them after that third time she saw them maybe she’d get some idea of how it was done and how she could do it too. Because the first time she’d seen them dancing it hadn’t been all crazy and wild like that. The first time she’d seen them dancing, it’d been a soft, slow song. They’d held onto each other, moving gently, and she’d watched their hands all holding and their cheeks all touching and their love so clear and she’d thought, _I’ll never dance like that_.

After she’d said hi, Spike offered to get her a beer. When she said she wasn’t drinking right now, he got her a soda. Actually went to the bar and got a can and a glass, and popped the tab and poured it for Buffy right there at the table. No question on why someone her age had said _right now_ , no wondering why she wanted to talk to them. Just taking her words of welcome for what they were. Kind of odd, but fairly normal. It was only as she kept talking to them did she start to see how faraway the two of them were from normal. The way Spike held himself and how he looked at people, and the way Dru slipped in and out of reality without ever noticing. That night, and the nights that came after.

Between what they did and didn’t say, what they would and wouldn’t talk about, there was a lot they told her. They’d traveled a lot before coming to Sunnydale, going around the world with another couple until the other woman went away somewhere. She’d come back, but then she left again, and the other man left a while after that, too, and it’d just been the two of them since then. It was still just the two of them, and that was how things were staying.

The three of them had a lot in common, it turned out. A lot more shared history than any of them thought at first, some sort of bad joke the universe wanted to tell itself, and with the set-up it had going who knew what the punchline would be. It’d made Buffy think about how for all that had come to her, when it had come, she’d had a lot more of the world surrounding her. Even if she hadn’t been able to feel it, what with her depression and suicide attempt and all, it’d still been there for her when she was ready. When it all came to them, they’d just had each other. No family, no doctors, no real home.

She’d been aware of the old factory ever since she moved to Sunnydale. According to Willow and Xander and the school library, canning used to be the town’s major industry until way back in the 1970s – Xander still had his family’s old union cards – when, after several decades of labor and toil, the plant got shut down because the company that owned the place decided to move the operations somewhere else. That was also when the city pivoted to higher learning, the state government offering Sunnydale the choice of a military base or a college. It’d gone with the college. Buffy didn’t know why Sunnydale hadn’t been able to go with both, or why nobody’d bothered to tear down the factory when they were done with it, but she was glad for both those things.

When she’d taken up Drusilla and Spike’s invite to see them out there, they’d offered her some fruit they’d scavenged around town, which had been all the hospitality they could manage. Things being as they were, she agreed the factory was the best place for them in Sunnydale. Places without anyone else around. It was better and safer for them. She’d looked around at all the empty space so far away from everyone, and she saw how it really was a good place for them to be alone together.

There was a song – not one of her favorites, exactly, just a song she’d gotten from Mom that she’d listened to a lot when she was in recovery from her breakdown. It’d helped her stay in the world and get through the days. She’d understood the sound of the song, but not all the lyrics. Buffy knew what it felt like to be full and hollow at the same time and felt better to hear someone sing it to her. It took meeting Spike and Dru for her to understand what it meant to be _so busy being free_.

Then she’d gone to talk to her mother. More conversations happened, things went down, another invitation was offered, and now she shared her house with them. The Bronze, too, sometimes, and these days when she watched them dance, no matter how they did it, she tried to be happy for them and not to wish for herself.

And now she had to go downstairs and talk to them about things she couldn’t tell them. All the way downstairs, through the living room and the kitchen to knock on the basement door before going in.

“Hey, there.”

Spike was sitting on the bed, propped up against the gray cement wall and reading something Dawn must’ve gotten for him from the library, and tossed out a hello. Dru was putting some clothes away, and she was the one who looked at Buffy to offer a greeting as both the washer and dryer rumbled away. Buffy stood there, looking around at their little corner of the basement world, and except for a couple of shelves of books and little trinkets, it was still like they’d just moved in. Still not a lot of stuff of theirs around. Over a year and a half down here, and they weren’t expecting to stay.

“So – you know, I never really got how nice it is down here this time of year. Sunnydale’s got a harder summer than LA, I guess it’s how we’re forty minutes from the ocean instead of it being right there and hiding out underground like this really cuts down on all the heat. I think I read there’s one town in Australia where everyone does this.”

“Coober Pedy,” Spike said, not looking up as he turned a page.

“Yeah, I think that was it.”

“Have you come for company?” Dru asked. “Or is there anything we’ve got you need?”

“No, but you’ve got something I want. Wait, not like that. Okay, let’s start this over. What I want is to talk, and who I want to talk with is Spike, and if it’s okay could he come with me to talk outside?”

“Sure thing,” he said, and pulled on his boots and stomped up the stairs after her. They weren’t going far, just the back porch. They didn’t have to get away from anyone – Mom was at work and Dawn was out at a friend’s. Even so, even knowing there was plenty of privacy inside, it felt important to leave the house for this. Get out and sit down on the steps so she could talk to Spike away from the feeling of other people.

She’d talked to Giles, a little, and to Anya, a little more. She’d gone through the books at the public library with Anya, which had been a learning experience in more ways than one. She’d talked to Dawn, and Mom, and her friends and then called Dr. Lin and this wasn’t something that should just be dumped right onto a person but had to be handed to them carefully. Which wasn’t why Anya was here today, but this wasn’t Buffy’s to tell him.

“You remember Anya?”

“Sure I do. Reading alcove and bookcases.”

“That’s right,” Anya said, smiling. “And you were music.”

“That I was.” He sat down on the steps next to her. “Buffy said you wanted to talk. What about?”

“To start, it’s something that can’t really be done delicately, but I’m going to try. Buffy, did you want to stay?”

“Yeah. I do.” But she didn’t sit down with them, letting them have that much more intimacy.

“Then we’re all here for this. Spike,” Anya began. “Do you know about autism?”

He looked at her, considering, because Spike considered every question. “No, I don’t think I’ve heard of it before.” He shrugged. “Is that a jazz band?”

“Oh,” Anya said, very quietly, and Buffy felt her heart break. _Buffy, do you know what depression is?_

“Funk song?” Spike tried again.

“All right,” Anya said. “Okay. Okay. Well. The basic, the most very basic definition of autism that I like to use…”


	20. touch my lips, touch souls, I know in your eyes

You aren’t a person. That condition remains beyond you. Instead, you live as a warning. A testament of what might happen to others if they are careless, to the good luck that fell to them to make them people. You are everything a monster is to be. This, you learn. Such is your purpose, monstrosity. Slowly, over the days and nights, you learn it well, something you seemed to be the last to know – always the last to know the most personal things, a grand jest the world makes at your expense. Understanding that you are a monster does not come effortlessly. How to be a monster is too simple a lesson to learn easily. All the lessons that everyone around you intuits, you struggle to take from careful observations. The ideas that fly into everyone’s arms, you have to fight to even so much as touch. And should you find them in your hands at last, you know you cannot hold them properly. You know you lack the words to ask why this is.

You know yourself a monster. That, at least, at last, is knowledge which rests easily all throughout yourself. You cannot say _why_ you are a monster. But you know yourself to be one. That, no one teaches you. That comes from within, and perfect.

What you come to learn is that which is needed for personhood, the grand concepts everyone else long mastered while you still struggle with fragmentary shards, is missing from within you. Not forgotten because there is no forgetting what you never knew. Instead: lost, absent, gone. The space where such things would live is instead filled with the selfsame teachings every day, the regular reminders of what you lack. You wish you could find those missing parts and pieces, fit them down inside yourself and come back up whole again, like you never were, like you never remember being, but that you know you ought to be.

But there is no regaining what you never lost, no reclaiming what was never taken from you. Nothing was taken. Nothing was removed. Nothing is gone. Not even so kind a fate as to be formed incomplete: made entirely and fully faulty. To show how someone can be made as to be that which is not a person.

This you cannot comprehend. This you accept. This you make to seem as though you understand. You practice such appearances of understanding to be a good lesson to others. To play a hidden monster is to play all the more frightening. And perhaps a step past: to play a monster so hidden as to be forgotten. To not be seen as a monster. To be seen as something else, though what that might be is too much for you to guess. But not be seen as a monster.

Hide yourself: every piece and parcel and part. Wipe yourself empty, make all that is you gone. Pretend not to be a warning, pretend to be nothing of importance. Show your teeth and bare your eyes and never flinch – hold yourself still but you must never, mustn’t ever flinch. Because flinching away from a person’s eyes is precisely what a monster would do. And you are making yourself not be a monster. You take away the rest of yourself, all of yourself, all your laughter and all your tears, so all of you matches the lost pieces. The lost places. You place everything away and make yourself empty.

You make yourself into something that is not a monster, and you know there is nothing left of yourself after your monstrosity, and you think this fair because nobody looks away from you any longer. You want to look away from them, but monsters do that, so you look, so you see them watching you – and you wish to know if their eyes were kind but you cannot know that, cannot be certain, and you try your best to tell them _I’m not a monster anymore_ and you wish you knew if their eyes were kind.

That you can’t be certain of. But you can pretend as though you are. Play the game of things and fool them into thinking so. Trick them into pretending alongside, fool them into accepting you. Use all you can. Find out how to hide yourself behind your face with your hands, your mouth, your words. Find the right words. Words to change the shape of things, words to make the world anew. 

Find out exactly the right words.

You still lack, still miss, still want so deeply. But you find the wanting easier when you are gone from yourself, after wiping away everything of yourself. When what you want is to touch – simply that, simply touch – you find ways to make yourself stop wanting. And it becomes easier yet and yet again. The more you want, the more you take away. Even when you hear the stories of lives promised falsely to you and truly to all others listening. Even when you hear the music of people screaming to the world how frightened they are, as frightened as you once remember being – everyone hears their anger, that much you can parse yourself, but no one else seems to hear the whispering of how scared they are, how much fear lives within their anger – and though you dream of wearing your feelings as armor as they do, you know you cannot. You’ve effaced your feelings so well you know that beyond you. Listening quietly to their whispered screaming fear is all you allow yourself, for your own dread of becoming a warning once again. You hold yourself still and silent, hold yourself so carefully, in such a way to never invite the possibility of a chance to break and shatter.

You think at last you’ve finally done away with yourself, and you think yourself almost contented with this fate all the way out to the end of the horizon. To stand untouched but a part, alone but within, seems the greatest you can dream. Such is the grandest hope you think you might be granted. But then she arrives – arrives into your life as no one ever has, seeking you out, seeing you for what you are and not turning away. Accepting you, every facet and face, in all your grand, terrific monstrosity, and never being afraid.

Because she herself lives as a warning.

And you find you haven’t yet effaced yourself entirely. You find everything remaining within you, all the sorrow and all the joy. As though you had always felt them, like they had never been deliberately forgotten. A monstrous thing, to feel so much, to feel again.

When she speaks, you forget everything you’ve ever taught yourself, everything you’ve ever learned. Because you speak to her, and she can hear you, all your forgotten sounds. When both of you speak together, it is with a clarity whose existence you can hardly comprehend, with all the struggles you once accepted now gone. Everything you’d ever wished to say, every word, she can hear. And you know your place is with her, wherever she might be going, her invitation to see the world accepted without hesitation.

She says, _It’s all right to smile._

She tells you, _You can laugh if you want to. It’s fine to laugh if you feel like laughing. Go ahead and smile, if you want to._

She says, _You can smile._


	21. some old guard takes a swig and passes back the jar

When Joyce asked how he’d come to this particular case out of all the ones possibly available to him, he’d chuckled gently. “A colleague of mine. She’s associated with someone who brought the case to our attention, who came to her first. She was investigating if anyone could offer a personal referral or recommendation for another firm or lawyer specializing in immigration law, and after I asked her for more details on this case, I realized it’s very much in keeping with the work I do on a day-to-day basis.”

“I see,” Joyce said.

“I’m taking it on as a bit of pro bono volunteerism, but I promise you, I’ll give it all the focus I would as if I were charging my usual rate. My apologies. A bit of humor we like to pass around the firm. As it is, do you have any recommendations for Sunnydale hotels? No, never mind. I’ll have my assistant find something suitable. Lovely talking to you, Mrs. Summers. I’ll be in touch.”

When Mr. Manners arrived at the house the following Wednesday morning, he looked exactly like how he’d sounded over the phone: unassuming, round at the edges, hard-working and blandly amiable. He didn’t make anything a threat. Joyce had met enough lawyers during the divorce to know that sort of face was always a deliberate façade, and almost had to admire the work that went into it. Still, she didn’t shake his hand for any longer than she had to.

Spike and Drusilla, meanwhile, had put on their best faces and seemed to be doing all right with a strange adult in the house, meeting his eyes and greeting him cheerfully and respectfully. They’d dressed like they were going to a fancy dinner party or desk job interview, nice clothes paired with jewelry and fresh nail polish, and they answered his questions in much the same attitude as he put forth: thoughtful and circumspect. He took notes on a yellow legal pad with a black ballpoint pen, and twice asked Joyce for a glass of water.

“I don’t think this case will take long. I’ve been reviewing the information your daughter provided,” he nodded at Joyce, Spike, and Drusilla, “and I’d say three months, six at most, should be sufficient.”

“Then you’ll be able to keep them in the States?” Joyce asked. Drusilla made a small noise and Spike hushed her. “No jail time or deportation?”

“Mrs. Summers, I love my job. Trust me when I say I’m very good at my job. And if you’ll allow me to be quite blunt, the fact that Drusilla and William are both white, English, and mentally ill is going to help this case immensely.”

“Your pardon?” Spike asked, leaning forward.

Mr. Manners glanced at him. “I assume you have a formal diagnosis. Something from a mental health professional that’d work as a declaration of your condition.”

“I’m afraid that’s not something I’ve yet managed,” he said, his eyes on Mr. Manners’s as he ran his fingers over the chain bracelet on his right wrist.

“Look into getting one as soon as you can. Within the week would be ideal. And do let me know when it happens.”

“I’ll make some calls,” Joyce promised.

There was more to the meeting, a good deal more, going on through lunch and into the afternoon – potential timetables, expected legal hurdles, gentle but strong assurances Mr. Manners knew exactly what he was doing. Reassurance to Drusilla he wouldn’t contact their families unless it was absolutely necessary and would do whatever he could to keep that from coming to pass. As soon as it was over and he was on his way back to his hotel for the night, Spike didn’t even get outside before sticking a cigarette in his mouth. At least he waited until he’d gotten to the porch to light it. Drusilla was a few paces behind, sitting with him as he smoked out all the tension he’d been holding. He slumped down into the basement almost an hour later absolutely redolent of tobacco and didn’t come up to get dinner; she had to take both plates down.

Mr. Manners came back the next day for another round of fieldwork, collecting more primary source material and firsthand interviews. When he laid it all down, his preliminary strategy and possible arguments sounded like a major European battle plan, and he described everything with a bland glee that made something in Joyce’s stomach go cold. But if he could deliver what he promised, she’d take that cold without hesitating.

Before he left to head back to LA, she took a little time to talk with him at the best of Sunnydale’s breakfast spots, one-on-one and face-to-face. He was reasonably pleasant when he wasn’t busy shaping people’s lives, even if it was being done for the better.

“Of course we’re all grateful. More than any of us can say. And like you keep saying, we don’t need to worry, so I’m not doing any of that.” He gave a very faint smile and subtle nod. She took a moment to think how to ask if there was such a thing as a catch without using that exact phrase. “I just – so I don’t keep working it over, is there anything you’re allowed to tell me about how you took this case on? I know you said a colleague of someone you’re associated with, or words to that effect, but is there anything else?”

“Well. Perhaps.” He took a bite of toast, chewed thoughtfully, and sipped his coffee before answering. “A colleague of mine brought it to my direct attention. She was alerted to it by another member of our firm – one of the sitting board members, actually. I can’t say what his direct association is with this case, other than it’s not as much a favor to him as it’s a favor to the individual who told him about it. That’s all I can say. That, and she’d have me drawn and quartered just to begin with if she knew I was saying even _this_ much.” He chuckled, almost sounding like a real human. A human who didn’t just know where the bodies were buried but was also on a first-name basis with the groundskeepers and gravediggers. “If it makes you feel any better, just think of it as your daughter having old friends who know people in high places.”

It did, a very little. Joyce flagged down the waiter, ordered a double mimosa, and let Mr. Manners cover the bill and tip.

She couldn’t afford that many more working days off from the gallery this financial quarter, not when they’d finally begun breaking ground on the café. But a week after that breakfast meeting, she could afford to leave work fifteen minutes early on a Tuesday afternoon to drive over to Buffy’s doctor’s office because someone else cancelled and Chelsea could squeeze Spike in. After Joyce had described what she’d likely be dealing with, she’d said, “While adult diagnoses aren’t my general area of expertise, I can meet with him for an initial consultation. As I would with any other prospective patient.”

“I think that’s all we need,” Joyce said. She’d been sitting outside Chelsea’s office, reading a four-year-old _Life_ magazine and trying not to check her watch and was still a little surprised when she opened the door and invited her inside.

She’d been inside Chelsea’s office before, once, right after moving to Sunnydale and following Dr. Coe’s referral. It’d been right before Buffy’s first session with her, lasting just long enough for Joyce to shake Chelsea’s hand and step outside so her daughter could see if this Dr. Lin was someone she could trust. It’d been a rare bit of good fortune in unfortunate times that they’d been able to work together so fast and so easily, no need to keep trying to find another doctor on top of all the other troubles with a move to a new town. Joyce had glanced around and gotten a sense of comfort and ease, no doubt cultivated very deliberately on Chelsea’s part to make things easier for her patients. Now she had more than a moment to look around and see the bookcases, the rugs, the children’s toys off in their corner, the Thiebaud print on the wall, what might have been a full-scale Eggleston reproduction, Spike sitting on the couch. He didn’t look at her when she came in and his expression didn’t change, but she could tell he noticed her presence from how he turned his head to look away.

“Mrs. Summers. Good to see you.” Chelsea smiled. “We were just wrapping up, and – Spike, it’s up to you.”

“Go ahead and tell her,” he said tonelessly, hauling himself to his feet and striding over to the windows by the willow trees.

“All right, then.” Chelsea beckoned Joyce to join her over by the toys on the other side of the room.

“Buffy’s friend was right on the money.” No preamble, no waiting, no greetings, just an immediate declaration. Chelsea spoke low and quietly to keep the conversation between her and Joyce, her voice filled with soft anger. “On some level it’s remarkable he never received anything. No professional attention, nothing. Diagnosis, therapies – I don’t like to use the phrase ‘left to fend for themselves’ but that seems to be fitting for William’s situation. What you need’s been taken care of, but what he needs, that’s going to take quite a bit more time. But that’s not why we’re here today, which is – well. Where did you need a copy of the paperwork sent to? In all likelihood I can have it ready to go by tomorrow evening. Friday morning, at the latest.” She nodded at the business card Joyce handed her. “Ah, a fax number. Ideal for exactly this sort of scenario.” She glanced back at Spike. “I think he might be ready to leave now.”

He was busy reading the titles on one of Chelsea’s bookcases, one by one, but when Dr. Lin said, “Spike, it’s about time to head out,” he obliged. He met Chelsea’s eyes during the good-bye, nodding and murmuring, and Joyce didn’t push him to finish his cigarette in the parking lot so they could leave and she could finally get home.

“So…” Spike ground out the butt underneath his bootheel, not bothering with the standing ashtray a few feet away, and lit a second one. Joyce crossed her arms and started over. “I was going to swing by the grocery store to pick up something to make for dinner. I was thinking maybe a chicken, or some pasta, but did you have any thoughts on that?”

He didn’t look at her. Or answer, like he hadn’t heard her speak. She was about to repeat herself when he said, “Why the bloody hell are you asking me?”

“Sorry?”

“What’s got you asking me about it? We both know there’s no point.” He kept on smoking and not making eye contact. “It’s kind of you to ask, you’re always kind to ask, but I’d be happier it if you didn’t pretend I’ve anything to offer you right now. I’m living off your charity. Whatever you give to me I’ll take, so don’t play like I can voice a preference.”

“All right.” 

She didn’t usually want to ask him for a cigarette but there were times she wanted a firsthand reminder of exactly why she didn’t anymore. Right now, to pick an example. 

“Well,” Joyce continued, trying to push down a surge of anger she didn’t understand, “when you’re done with that, why don’t – we’ll head home when you’re done.” 

He nodded, and that was the end of words exchanged. Not that there was much else to say. He finished up his cigarette, climbed into the front passenger seat, and stared out the side window all the way back. Tempting as it was to stop at the Co-Op on the way back and really take her time browsing the bulk goods, she didn’t allow herself more than the spiteful thought and went right home. She could pull something together from the pantry.

When they got home, she’d barely pulled into the driveway when he’d unbuckled himself and slid out of the car, still not talking, eyes forward and focused on leaving for somewhere else right that very moment. Joyce watched him march off, quite aware that if she hadn’t had the time to pick him up he’d have just walked home, however long and many miles it was from Dr. Lin’s office to the house, and probably with that exact same expression the whole way.

Buffy was still at Willow’s for finals prep. Dawn was over at Monica’s playing some puzzle computer game. Neither of them was coming home for dinner. They could, but they didn’t have to, and both were happy when Joyce gave them the all-clear on having their evening meals somewhere else for a change. She wasn’t exactly concerned, but something near to it that she didn’t look at closely. Not even when she tried to join Spike and Drusilla out on the back porch.

“– since I was born. You hear that? It’s how it works for me, she said, the way it’s always been, God’s sake, Dru, it’s been a bloody _waste_ of a life. All these years and I never knew, you knew soon as it happened, nobody ever said to me, not like how it happened for you but I never even knew there was a _word_ to – ah, the lady of the house,” he said, tapping away some ash without looking at her. “Making a grand entrance to meet with the resident lunatics.”

“All right, I know Buffy sometimes gets on edge after she sees Dr. Lin, so if you’re –”

“Well then. Put the blame for how someone’s feeling on circumstances, dismiss any possible underlying cause, and you’re somehow surprised she never takes her problems to you.”

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t bother going to ask her yourself. You know she’ll never tell you.”

“Spike, I can tell you’re upset, and if –”

“Fabulous! I can tell I’m feeling rotten, too, what other news have you got to share? That I’m not crazy, just sick? As though what I’ve got is catching. That my being angry’s upsetting you and you’d rather I choke down everything? How’s about we just go on pretending nothing’s wrong since that’s always worked out so well for you?”

“Dearest,” Drusilla said. “There’s no call for a lashing.”

“No, there’s _every_ fucking reason, maybe not in the future but now this moment it’s everything you could think of, just let me have it right at present, let me have it _now_. There?”

“Here,” she said, and stood. “Mrs. Summers.” Drusilla’s hand was on her shoulder. “We’d best head away.” She kept pushing, _hard_ , and Joyce found herself being lead along back into the house. Drusilla didn’t bother to say anything more to Spike, who’d fallen back into silence. She closed the door behind them and kept pushing against Joyce, who finally pulled away.

“You mind explaining this?”

“Explaining what? Be precise. I need to know what it is you’re confused by.”

“I’ve just never seen him act like this. It’s so sudden I don’t know what I should be worried about, if I should be worried, if he needs something or if he doesn’t need – I don’t know.”

“What he needs is us to let him to be upset. Let him mourn.”

“Mourn.” She crossed her arms. “What did he lose?”

Drusilla looked at Joyce, something intense swimming up from the fathoms in her eyes. Sometimes Drusilla looked at people like they weren’t there, or as though they were a part of a delusion, or like they were on another world completely. She didn’t usually look at people as though she could see into them, as though her schizophrenia cut through the world everyone put up. That was exactly how she was looking at Joyce right now. Like all the constructs of the world had blown away and only the truth of the people in it was left. Joyce found herself wanting to pull away from that intensity but made herself stand firm.

“He lost his life, Mrs. Summers. He didn’t even know he had it taken from him, not until now it’s been returned.” She kept on looking right at Joyce. “Don’t ask after knowledge if you know you won’t understand it when it’s given. He’ll give you his apologies when he’s ready. He’ll let you know when that is. Don’t think he won’t. Just not now, not yet. He’ll come back to us soon enough.”

The apologies did come, eventually. About three days later, after quiet, angry glances and as few words as possible passed anyone’s way, all but snarling and baring his teeth if anyone but Drusilla so much as tried to talk to him, even Dawn, he sidled up to Joyce in the kitchen one morning and mumbled out something close to sorry.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Yeah, well,” he muttered. He didn’t turn his head to look her way. “I know I might not sound like I mean it, but I do.”

“I understand,” Joyce insisted. “It’s fine. Thanks.” 

Spike didn’t say anything more.

Joyce had done a little research of her own. A few of the books she’d bought after Buffy’s own breakdown and diagnosis referenced autism in passing, and there were a few more at the library that spoke about it directly. She’d looked through those like she was being watched, quickly putting them away before pulling some back off the shelf to check them out and read what they had to say more thoroughly. A fair amount of it lined right up with what she’d seen from Spike himself, and Buffy’s new friend Anya. Parts of it were in keeping with everything she knew, from the intensity of his attachment to a few particular topics to the way he couldn’t always read a room, or even just the person standing next to him.

But other pieces just didn’t fit. Making friends, finding romance, living an independent life without any assistance: those were supposed to be impossible for people who were autistic. But somehow Spike had managed. He was managing with Drusilla better than Joyce had with Hank. He’d survived years of homelessness. She’d rarely met anyone _less_ emotionally expressive. At first, she couldn’t believe Chelsea’s diagnosis.

Then she’d remembered how much she’d pushed against Dr. Coe’s diagnosis when she’d first heard that, all those years ago. And how she sometimes looked at Buffy, smiling and happy and alive, so gloriously _alive_ , and she knew if anyone learned Buffy had clinical depression, they wouldn’t believe it. But she did. Because the condition alone couldn’t tell the person’s whole story. It could say a lot about them, about where they came from and how they lived, and couldn’t come close to everything.

“Do you want anything for –” She stopped, let herself start over. “Can I make you some coffee?”

“Not to live up to the stereotype,” Spike said, “but I’d rather have some tea.”

“We’ve got that too.”

“It’s appreciated,” he told her. It wasn’t close to everything. But hearing it, knowing it, was enough to be able to start a new understanding.


	22. she knew your lies

Buffy didn’t run into people in LA anymore. She could, theoretically, if she got really lucky one day, with or without a quantifying un. But she’d have to be really astronomically lucky one way or another for that to happen, the sort of luck she didn’t want to lean on. So she didn’t _run_ into people. She met them instead. It was all very adult and grown-up of her, making plans for the future and seeing them through, the sort of all-important professional networking her parents were always going on about these days. And if someone had to cancel, Buffy just lied about her plans and got an afternoon alone in her hometown. So that worked out too.

People she’d known from school in LA, from school in Sunnydale – Anne was doing good these days, hired by the Crenshaw shelter as an administrative assistant, and even though Buffy was a little sad she’d missed his funeral, she liked knowing Ford had gotten one, and what with Cordelia moving into the big city soon to make sure she wouldn’t have to wait for her real life to begin, Buffy would have to look her up in a few months. Some people that weren’t exactly her friends, either, that she still wanted to keep in touch with. Let them know she was still alive.

And as Xander would say, _and then there’s this asshole._

“Their paperwork’s almost done,” Buffy said. “Another meeting with a judge, a couple more weeks of waiting, and it’ll be all finished. Green cards and everything.”

“Good.” Angel nodded, sighed. “Good for them.”

“Big weight off everyone’s shoulders,” she went on.

“I know I started sleeping better after I got mine.”

“Yeah. And they still don’t know you’re involved with any of this. As far as they’re concerned it’s just someone who knows someone who I used to know in LA, big chain of links like that.”

Things were getting better between them. The first time she went to see Angel after moving to Sunnydale, it was just to be able to say she’d looked him in the eye and walked away. Now they were capable of actually talking to each other. Such as it was.

“You’ve graduated high school.”

“Following the projected schedule and everything.” Buffy sipped her raspberry mocha. “And what are you up to these days? Still bouncing for that same bar out in Silver Lake?”

“No, I left that a few months back.”

“Right.”

He at least had the good sense to look mildly apologetic over having not thought to tell her about it the last time they’d talked. Which had definitely been within the time frame of a few months. Not that it’d come up at all during the few minutes they’d exchanged the bare minimum of possible words over the phone to communicate the then-present situation. Just that it was something that should’ve been shared between people with as much history as they did. Even if it’d only been a total of ten weeks, all told, they’d been pretty ground-shakingly memorable. It didn’t run wide between the two of them: it ran deep.

“And you left it for…”

He sipped his coffee – decaf, black, and what was even the point with that, he might as well have gone for tepid water for all the indulgence he was giving himself. “I’m an in-house investigator for a law firm now. Not for the one I went to see about, um, the problem we talked about that’s on its way to being solved.” Buffy had to admire the way he could still draw a verbal outline. “Someone else. It’s a lot smaller, and there’s a completely different set of initials on the business cards.”

“That’s a relief. Wouldn’t want to tangle yourself up _too_ much in your ex’s family life. So what’s it you do for this tiny little firm? Is it like _Law and Order?”_

“I wish. More Columbo if anything. It’s not as sexy as TV makes it look. I don’t even pick the cases; they get assigned to me. There’s a lot of asking questions, a lot of waiting in cars, listening to phone calls. Following people to get the right bits of information so a lawyer gets the right evidence for their arguments. I haven’t even been inside a courtroom yet.”

“I’d think that’d be a little sexy. All those long flowing robes.”

Angel smiled at her. It was a great smile. She still went a little weak over it, and all the good memories that she worked on keeping to drown out the bad ones.

“Anyway. Did you have to get a license for that?”

“Only if I want to go work for myself.” 

They sipped their drinks. Given a couple seconds to think about it, a job looking for people suited him. He’d told her he’d moved to LA not for the joke of the name but because he wanted to find a few people – a woman, a little boy, things she hadn’t thought were important at the time and didn’t know how to bring up again. She already knew he’d found his woman. Maybe that little boy would turn up someday, too.

“And you’re going to college this year.” Angel had lived in America about as long as Dru and Spike, nearly the same as Giles, but except for a few hints around some incidental vowels, his Galwegian accent was pretty much gone.

“Yeah. September.”

“That’s good. I’m sure you’ll do great.” No insinuation she was a good person for wanting to go to college; no comments that his family had wanted him to go but he was too much a bad boy to give into them; not even anything about how sexy it was to slum it down with him. Just gentle praise and well-wishes.

“I’m going to show up and give it a shot,” she said. 

“That’s all anyone can do.”

“As I’m learning.” One nice thing about talking to Angel, definitely the nicest thing, was that she didn’t have to always check herself to not make jokes like that. He was one of four people she could say that about, and he was the only one she didn’t currently live with or see for her medication. “Hey, are you still on Depakote?” She asked, pushing away the internalized social values shrieking at her to not talk about this sort of thing outside her doctor’s office. Sometimes a coffee shop on Venice Beach was a perfectly acceptable context. It depending on who she was talking to.

“No, I switched to Lithium. It’s a lot better for getting to sleep. And you?”

“Still on Zoloft and Bupropion.”

“Find what works and stick with it.”

“Boy howdy.”

He’d given her his contact information during their second week together. When she found the scrap of paper during packing up to move north to Sunnydale, she’d almost gotten rid of it. Something he’d given her as a power move, a control play, a path leading her right back to his open arms. Then she’d decided against burning it, just in case. Just in case of what, she hadn’t been able to say, but now she could look back on that afternoon, put that next to Spike and Drusilla staying in the United States, and be grateful she’d kept it.

Angel had taught her a lot of lessons, most of them unintentionally. If what he said to her right now was _I was a different person back then_ or _I’m sorry you got hurt_ she’d throw her coffee right in his face. Back when he’d said those things to her, exactly those things, she’d been happy to hear them. Now she knew how to listen. Hence the surety of the coffee-throwing.

Hence knowing when just quietly being with someone could be nice. And maybe someday she’d hear _I’m sorry that I hurt you._

Before they left, she said, “There’s just one more thing.”

“I didn’t know you watched the show.”

“What show?”

“Never mind. Go ahead.”

Buffy took a moment to make sure she had her words together. “When you called Darla. And you talked to her and you got her to talk to her uncle or cousin or whoever who got someone at his giant evil law firm to come up to Sunnydale to help Spike and Drusilla.”

“I had to get someone to pass on a message to get her to see me, but I was able to see her eventually.”

“That’s what I want to know. What’d you say that got her to talk to you?”

“Oh, that. It wasn’t all that hard, really.” 

His answer made her go all cold, even in the warm June afternoon. She’d asked, and she’d gotten an answer, and it was the most he’d told her about those years traveling the world with what he’d called his family. It was more than enough. The things it meant weren’t ones she wanted to think about. 

He’d said, “I told her it was about the children.”


	23. one will stand to cripple’s words

It wasn’t until Spike and Drusilla started making plans to move out of the basement that Joyce really noticed just how many apartment complexes there were in Sunnydale. She’d considered them as a general feature of the town, something unremarkable that came from a large and steadily rotating temporary population – students that wanted to escape the dorms, adjuncts and postdocs who hadn’t gotten places of their own yet. But now she was paying attention, thanks to Spike and Drusilla tacking up possibilities over a DMV-supplied Sunnydale city map, cross-referencing with the paper’s local listings and free flyers from the kiosks outside the Co-Op.

They wanted somewhere with smoking permitted, where they could walk to work and do laundry on site. Anything besides that would be nice, but not necessary – things like the number of bedrooms and the size of the kitchen weren’t among their concerns with evaluating possible locations. Same for things like proximity to train tracks and cemeteries or the number of closets and windows.

She didn’t ask how much lying or how many omissions they were anticipating, just if she could get them some more tea. She offered assurances they could use her as a guarantor if necessary and they’d eventually find something in their price range and the place they found might even have a swimming pool. A gentle reminder they’d better move fast if they saw something they liked because summer was ending and the next crop of students would be flowing in soon. Then a private moment of relief that Buffy had decided on the dorms for her first year – a completely different set of worries and concerns that didn’t overlap in the least, because at least dorms provided the furniture and included utilities.

They’d used the house phone to set things up. Joyce covered when she’d picked up a call from someone Thursday evening expecting a different person: this was the right number for them, not a mistake, they couldn’t come to the phone right now but she was certain this coming Sunday would work and if not, she’d call back as soon as they got home and they’d be able to arrange another day and time.

“Shouldn’t be a problem giving Sunday to her,” Drusilla said, depositing her bag of salvaged grapefruits on the counter. “We’ll have more than enough time for us to prepare.”

“If you’ve got any questions, I’m sure I could help. Or Mr. Giles, he’s got more experience with things like renter’s insurance than I do –”

“Insurance?” Spike asked, looking up from sorting out the squished tangerines. “The listing didn’t say we needed any. We can still rent the place even if we haven’t got that, right? Wouldn’t they’d say that if that’s how it was?”

“They didn’t because you don’t. I mean, you don’t need the insurance to rent an apartment beforehand. Worry about getting the place first.”

“All right,” he said, and went back to the fruit. It always astounded her the way he could actually and honestly be _all right_ , just like that. He could be stuck in one feeling for days and he could change emotions fast enough to give her whiplash and that was just how things went for him. Whatever it was he felt, however it went, it was never anything but strong. Maybe that was how he looked closer to _all right_ than Joyce thought she might have been under the circumstances.

Preparations for the interview included deciding it’d just be Spike to go meet Ms. Alvares, picking his outfit, practicing questions with Joyce and Drusilla trimming his hair and re-bleaching it because a uniform punk look was better than exposed roots or a shaved head, and then asking Joyce to come along with him and not hiding how happy he was that she’d agreed. 

The days moved forward, anticipation giving way to nervousness and worry, and it was a surprise that on Sunday, which should have been bursting with emotions, Spike and Drusilla weren’t saying anything. Not just to each other: they weren’t speaking to anyone. Drusilla handed Joyce her morning coffee with a nod, and Spike mimed his way through a conversation with Dawn.

“You’ll invite us over, right?” He nodded. “I mean as soon as you get everything moved in to wherever you’re going. But I’m sure you’ll get this one.” He shrugged, and when breakfast was over, he took a shower and waited by the front door for Joyce to get herself ready. Even on the drive over, he didn’t talk, and when Joyce parked the car, he didn’t immediately move to leave. What he did was reach into his dress shirt’s pocket and pull out a slim case, then put on a delicate-looking pair of glasses she’d never seen him wear before. No, that wasn’t really true. She’d seen him wear them on his student ID.

He leaned back against the headrest, closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. She was about to ask him if he was ready to go when, almost too soft for her to hear even in the quiet of the parked car, he whispered, “Sing, Michael, sing.” Before she could ask if that was a hymn or a prayer or something else entirely, he was climbing out of the car, heading off to the office where Ms. Alvares was already waiting for them, right up front by the mailboxes just like she’d said. 

“You must be Mr. Pratt,” she said, shaking his hand – free of nail polish, with just a single heavy ring on his right index finger – and glancing at Joyce. “And is this Ms. Keeble?”

“Joyce Summers, actually,” Joyce said, “temporary chauffeur.”

“My apologies.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“Well, in any case, it’s a pleasure to see you both,” she said.

Then Spike opened his mouth and Joyce did what she could to not stare when Masterpiece Theatre fell out in all its phonic glory. “Yes, and to you as well. I do appreciate that we were able to find a suitable time to meet so quickly. Shall we begin?” 

“Oh! Certainly. The unit’s right this way, follow me.” She nodded and took them up a flight of stairs – apartment complex or not, it still followed the low horizon line of central California residential architecture – and down the way to the apartment, giving them a brief overview of the building, the amenities of the location, as she unlocked the door to lead them inside. “It’s a standard one-bedroom layout, living area, the kitchen’s through here or would you rather start with the bedroom?”

“That would be splendid,” he said, following her down the hallway. “If I might ask, the other units – of course we’d like our new home to be here, but wherever we find ourselves, Drusilla and I hope to stay on there for at least the next few years. What might the usual turnover be, of the other residents?”

“Not that high,” she answered. “There’s a few who are here on one-year leases but there’s some who’ve stayed on longer.”

“Ah.” He checked the size of the closet and made sure to test the ceiling fan, sighing when it moved smoothly through its three speeds. “Drusilla is quite fond of sleeping under a good summertime breeze,” he said. “I expect with the front windows there should be some good circulation, provided we leave the bedroom door open. Was that too forward of me? My apologies if it was.”

“No, it’s fine. Then it’s just you two that plan on moving in?”

“Yes. I’m sorry she wasn’t able to attend today, but there’s no point in dwelling on disappointments.”

“Well said. If you want air conditioning we don’t –”

“While it’s true we’re not married, securing a legally sanctified matrimonial bond simply isn’t as high a priority in England as in America and we’ve never seen reason to go to the trouble of the paperwork when we’ve no plans on leaving one another.” The words came out in a rush, almost spilling out, and even if his voice didn’t shake, he clasped his hands together in front and put on a genuine smile while keeping on with steady eye contact.

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Ms. Alvares said, smiling back. Spike’s right hand relaxed, his left still twisting the ring around his finger. “I’ve got a friend that – I’m not going to name names, but you should hear about some of the shenanigans the grad students get up to across town. But, as I was saying, if you wanted an air conditioner installed you’d have to have an approved contractor do the installation work itself. Building policy.”

“I understand,” he said, still in that almost melodious accent Joyce wouldn’t have ever guessed he was capable of producing, much less sustaining. “Thank you for letting me know well ahead of time, should that be necessary.”

There wasn’t a bathtub, but a good-sized shower, and a tiling pattern that put Joyce right back to her first apartment’s bathroom, all the way off in 1975. Thankfully Spike and Ms. Alvares weren’t that concerned with the location’s evocation to Joyce’s youth, leaving her to reminisce while Spike tested the water pressure and asked about the landlord’s policy on repair work. In the kitchenette, he asked about the oven and the apartment’s general insulation in winter, how often the smoke detector needed its batteries changed, always waiting for her to finish before asking more.

Ms. Alvares answered every question Spike had, something thoughtful going over her face when he started going after things like the policies on package deliveries and contacting the superintendent and if utilities were bundled in with the rent or not. Joyce wondered if Spike saw it, too. After telling him about the general noise volume expected and respected among current tenants, Ms. Alvares said, “Actually, I know you came to look at this one but there’s another unit that’ll be opening soon if you’d like to see it.”

“Oh,” Spike said, eyes going wide and eyebrows going up in completely genuine surprise. “Only if you’re certain that it wouldn’t inconvenience you.”

“Not a bit. It’s right down this way,” she said, leading them back around, up the stairs and farther down the building’s arm to the second-story corner unit. 

As they waited for her to get the keys ready, staring out at the treetops from the comparative height of the second floor, Joyce heard Spike whisper to himself again, this time something that sounded like, “Ain’t no asylum here.” Not that she could ask him to repeat or explain it because Ms. Alvares opened the door to an apartment that was very much like the one they’d just been in except for all the ways it was better. More windows meant more light, the edge of the building meant being able to play music just a little bit louder, a bathtub meant the chance to lie down and really soak in luxury, and a second bedroom was that much more space available to whoever’d be living here. “We’re not listing it just yet because it’s still due for a few renovations – nothing major, mostly some rewiring and a little work in the kitchen, a bit of spackling here and there, but when it’s finished it’ll be mostly the same. Feel free to check around.”

“Why, yes. Thank you,” Spike said, and went to do just that. He took enough time for Joyce and Ms. Alvares to exchange some bland small talk. He didn’t disturb their conversation, standing so quiet and so still it took them a moment to see he’d come back. When they did, he made sure to turn all his attention onto Ms. Alvares, a flattering intensity. “This is, well, let me say this is _quite_ generous of you to even think of mentioning it to me.”

“It won’t be open for another three weeks. I don’t know how fast you needed to move in.”

“I expect another three weeks won’t make a terrific difference. Mrs. Summers?” It took Joyce a moment to realize he was asking for her attention. “What would you say is a reasonable course of action? Find ourselves a new place right away, or apply the theory of delayed gratification?” 

“Another three weeks is worth it if you’re spending them waiting for a place like this.”

“There you have it. I’ll still need to confer with Drusilla, of course, but I rather suspect she’ll be quite pleased. Though would it be boorish of me to ask what the increased rent might be, over the first one you’ve shown us?”

Not all that much more, as it turned out, to both Joyce and Spike’s surprise. “There’s always a little room for negotiation with these things. You work for the university, right?”

“That’s correct. UC Sunnydale is my primary employer.”

“All right. I can’t promise anything, but I think I can work some leeway if I have someone lined up right away ahead of time. If you’re sure you’ll be completely ready to three weeks from now…” She trailed off, and Spike stared at her, waiting expectantly, until she said, “You will be ready, won’t you?”

“Oh! Yes, yes, Drusilla and I could be ready in as little as four days from now if need be, twenty-one days shouldn’t present any difficulties.” 

“Good. Now, there’s no way we can bring this place down to that first unit’s price, but, like I said, a little leeway. Why don’t I make a couple of calls and get back to you?”

“When do you think you’ll know for sure?” Joyce asked. “Ballpark it. Monday afternoon? Tuesday morning?”

“Let’s aim for Monday afternoon.”

“I look forward to hearing from you,” Spike said.

There wasn’t much more to the tour: an overview of recycling policies, a tour of the laundry room, bike parking and car parking and the logistics of trading their given assigned vehicular space to another unit’s tenants if desired. A promise to confer with Drusilla by the day’s end. All that, and they were ready to head home and it wasn’t yet lunchtime.

“I expect having to cancel the other tours,” Spike said, slipping off his glasses once they were in the car, the melodious accent still flowing, every vowel in each word clear and smooth. “Though I’d rather not be prematurely rash about doing so. As Ms. Alvares said, we should know by tomorrow evening.”

“One way or the other. Why haven’t I seen those before?”

“What, these?” He looked at his glasses. “I don’t wear them all that often anymore. Just the one pair, it’d be quite difficult to replace them should anything happen.”

“Not that hard, these days.”

“Possibly not.” He slid them away. “But I’d still rather keep them safe.”

“All right.”

He stayed quiet on the drive back, not even muttering thanks, just heading for the basement. He’d changed out of his formal event wear into his usual black on black with extra black everyday clothes and his coat for good measure by the time Joyce saw him again, after she called to make sure the girls were at their friends’ houses and went out to join him and Drusilla behind the garage.

“Spike tells me it went well,” Drusilla said. Spike didn’t look her way.

“I think it did,” Joyce said. Oh, to hell with it. “You mind if I…can I…” She gestured to his cigarette, and he stared at her. And kept staring. His eyes were open but lacking any understanding, something she found more unnerving than any rage or anger he might fling her way.

Drusilla nudged him. “Let her have a turn.”

Spike nodded and passed it over. Joyce took one breath to try things out, then took another after her body remembered how to handle itself – swallow, not gulp, and accept the burning in exchange for the light that started racing along the edges of her skin almost as soon as she’d exhaled, sunrise and sunset and sunshine all at once. Then she handed it back to Spike, grateful for the reminder and not wanting anything more. “Thank you.” He nodded again. “So – did you get a chance to talk about…” Spike didn’t even raise his head, looking at the ground as he kept smoking. Drusilla looked at Joyce the way Ms. Alvares had looked at Spike, waiting for him to say when he might be ready. Now, Joyce said, “We toured a second apartment after the first. It’s in the same complex, a little bigger so a little more expensive, and it won’t be open for another three weeks.”

“Yes, he told me of that surprise, though not its precise dimensions. How much bigger is that one?”

“Two bedrooms, a little more space in the living room – it’s got a bathtub, too.” Drusilla’s eyes went wide, her face lighting up and her whole body jumping at the news. “But there’s still some waiting. Since it’s not officially available yet, the agent has to see if she can arrange for you to move in. There’s still the chance they’ll want to put it out on the market instead of having someone come in right away.”

“Property and real estate are stable markets too often subjugated by a punter’s whims,” Drusilla said. “Let’s hope we’re not up against such a fellow.” Spike pushed out a sound that Joyce could charitably call amused, and then made an unmistakable sigh that prompted Drusilla to say, “It’s not wrong to keep hope in your hands.” Spike shook his head. “There’s no need to be unpleasant.” He didn’t look at her, just closed his eyes and finished off the cigarette.

“Listen, if there’s anything you need…” Joyce put her hand on his upper arm to get his attention. “If you –”

She didn’t have time to process the sound he made –not even a swear word, just a sound. Something sharp in surprise at her hand on his arm. No time to process that he made it, or how he’d flinched away from her touch. Not when he’d done both so fast. It caught up to her after the fact when he shrank away from her, dismayed over what she’d just done and in complete incomprehension over why she’d done such a thing as to touch him. He moved his gaze away, slowly, glancing at her out of the corner of his eyes, suspicious and cautious she might try something like that a second time.

Drusilla cleared her throat and made sure Joyce was making eye contact with her before she said, “You know, this coat’s gotten fairly well chipped. Spike, why don’t we go get some polish so you can do these fresh for me?” 

He’d been fishing his lighter and cigarettes out of his coat pocket, then shrugged and put them back, and followed Drusilla away. Joyce waited until she could be fairly certain they were down in the basement before she went inside up to her own private bedroom, closing the door behind her. When she came down for a late lunch, Drusilla was busying around the kitchen, quietly talking to her voices. All Joyce could hear was half a conversation, and even if parts of it were distressing Drusilla – making her _cross_ , as she’d sometimes put it – she still took what was apparently comfort in their presence. It was hard for Joyce not to be distressed by what she was hearing, but she was learning.

“Hi there.”

“Oh, hello.”

Might as well jump on ahead. “Is Spike…he seemed all right, but then we got home and he was, well, you know him better than I do. Should I be worried?”

“He should be all right by Tuesday,” Drusilla said. “Most likely we won’t have to wait until Wednesday to see him back inside himself, just a good night’s sleep and some time alone. He worried you today but you needn’t be. He doesn’t get like this much often anymore. We try to keep it so he doesn’t have to empty himself like he did today, but we both knew I couldn’t as easily pretend not to be sick for the lovely woman you both saw today. He’s better at pretending than I am. Even if it tires him out so.”

“Just a day or two to fill himself back up with, what, spirit? Vigor?”

“That’s more or less the shape of things. I think…” She shook her head and spoke gently. “It’s not a thing either of us have much reason to put into words, not for each other. So not much reason for anyone at all. We don’t often need words between us. But I think what I can say, to you here and now, is that I step outside the world sometimes and it’s Spike that steps outside himself. But he’ll return. He always knows the way to fly back home.”

She closed her eyes and sipped her tea. Joyce decided a cup of her own would help, maybe something with peppermint, and took a moment to take in the box of teabags. It was hokey, sure, and sometimes drinking herbal teas made her feel more like a mom than raising two children ever did, but it had complete sincerity going for it, and it always did what it promised and helped her relax. How much of that was the tea and how much of it was not doing anything else while she waited around for it to steep, she didn’t know. But she offered to make Drusilla another cup if she wanted.

“Yes, please,” she said, smiling.

“I could go out and grab something to cook for dinner, but if you wanted to order something I’d be happy to.”

“There’s no cause for celebration just yet. Wouldn’t do us any good with being hasty. Whatever you deem suitable for the day would be sufficient.”

“It’s less a mark of a day well spent and more that I don’t feel up to cooking anything tonight.”

“Oh.” Drusilla nodded. “Well. With that being the circumstances, we’ll take anything you like, so long as it’s easy for Spike to eat.”

“What do you mean by easy?”

“Nothing to cut. Nothing to spoon. Something where he won’t have a need for any tools besides his hands.”

“Oh. Oh, yes. I remember Buffy having trouble with – well, with picking up things to use them to eat. Never mind her appetite. Just moving food from the plate to the fork to her mouth. You wouldn’t think that the extra step of the fork would be too much, and then you find out sometimes it is.”

“Much like that.” 

The girls were home for dinner – a creative application of leftovers, pantry staples, and recently found fruit, plus a couple of sandwiches for Spike – which gave Spike and Drusilla reason and excuse to stay ensconced in the basement for the rest of the evening. Most of the morning, too, Drusilla taking breakfast down and the two of them barely acknowledging anyone when they left for work. Actual work, still cleaning, still fixing other people’s messes, but for steady paychecks now, with uniforms and locker rooms and union representation as part of the job.

Drusilla told her Spike always came back to himself eventually, but what always got him back right away was something strong from outside. Maybe a fight, maybe drugs, maybe something worse, though in the case of Sunnydale, what he had to work with was hard physical effort in all possible forms and methods, from his day job down to the acts leading to the bitter smell of day-old smoker’s come on the basement sheets. She’d done their laundry as a way of showing support, and one sniff of an unmistakable, immediately recognizable scent brought back a handful of good memories and a host of disappointing ones. Sam hadn’t been her boyfriend for very long, but it’d been fun while it lasted. There were plenty of things she could say about Hank, but he’d always known how to keep himself healthy.

Getting laid seemed to help Spike, as did working his job, staying quiet, and getting good news. On Tuesday morning, he wasn’t walking with a swagger or a smile, but he’d gotten back to looking like there was someone living behind his eyes when Joyce found him in the kitchen. This was getting to be a habit, but it was also time to get on with breakfast. Just toast and fruit and tea for him; no cereal or oatmeal. Still no spoons, just his hands, and he wasn’t looking at her, but he wished her a good morning in his normal speaking voice and that was enough to start with.

“So,” Joyce started. 

“Thank the accent,” Spike said, eyes back down on his tea. “Nothing against Americans, wonderful country you’ve built here, representative democracy’s a noble principle to found a nation on, but you lot will believe _anything_ if it’s said like how I was talking.”

“We really will,” she joked, and gave into the urge. “How’d you manage to pick up that accent?”

He still didn’t look up at her, but he smiled. “My parents.”

“Ah.”

Ms. Alvares had called Monday evening, a few hours off from her original estimation. Joyce had been in the kitchen when she’d heard the noises from the basement, muffled as they were through the door, and had to wonder how much of the sex was out of the need for human connection without having to use any words and how much was out of celebration. Probably about fifty-fifty.

“It’s a nice place,” she said, shifting the conversation’s gears without a clutch.

“Very nice.” There were some things where Spike was manual, and with others, like conversations, he moved on automatic. “A place to dream about. I checked the exchange rate; we’d have to be really raking it in to afford an apartment like this in London. All right, maybe Lewisham, but not where either of us is from, not these days. You know we grew up just a few miles apart? Poplar and Islington. We were so near each other, but never had any idea. Everything it took for us to meet, really makes you wonder about things like fate.”

“I suppose it does.” She began the coffee. “So just under three weeks to get everything ready.”

“Find a bed. Find a dresser. Find a table and some chairs.”

“That part’s not so hard. Even if you’ve only got a couple of weeks for it.”

“Not for you, you’ve done it what, four times now? Five? We counting every time you moved house or each time you had to get a new room’s worth of furniture?”

“One apartment, another apartment, first house, second house, this house. I’ve had a lot of stuff follow me around. A good bedside table can outlast a marriage.” He chuckled. “I was wondering, though. Since you’ve got this new place. And you’ve got your green cards coming, and solid employment history…”

“Joyce.” He leaned forward onto the kitchen island, raising his head to look her in the eyes. “It’s all right. Dru and I are very happy with where our lives are now. We wouldn’t be this happy if you hadn’t been so kind.”

“I’d do it all over again, but I was just thinking, were you going to find something else after this?”

“What, a different job?” She nodded. “No, we’re fine.”

“Don’t you think you should set your sights higher than just being janitors? Now that you can.”

“Right, because an unfinished degree in Romantic poetry in the English tradition from the sixteenth to the twentieth century focusing on women’s authors is really going to have people knocking down the door to offer me that bank job.” He didn’t look away from Joyce. “We’ve got dreams, but we’re not pretending. We’re happy where we are, and that sort of work – that sort of life, it’s not what we want now.”

Fighting the urge to ask _you studied poetry_ , she went with, “What do you want, then?”

He kept his eyes on hers, and Joyce saw all the depth of sorrow, all the bruised hope, he carried around with him. Not for the first time, she thought about how even with everything she’d read about depression, schizophrenia, autism, how nothing prepared her for how the lived-in experiences compared to the expert’s words. How her daughter did the impossible every day just by living. How if Spike and Drusilla had managed this far, starting with so much less, then maybe Buffy had a chance at more than just a present.

“We want to be people,” Spike said. “We’ve both wanted it for a long time and we almost have it now. Everything else that might come to us, we’ll work to get or never mind it if it’s not important, and that’s the only thing we want that isn’t ours to gain. We can’t become people just by ourselves, not when it’s something that’s given by those around us. Whatever she and I know of ourselves doesn’t matter, whatever we think of each other doesn’t have any bearing on this because it’s not about who we are together, it’s about who we are to the rest of the world. Becoming people the way we want to be is something we have to earn. We’re doing the work to earn it now and we’re not going to see that work go to waste by chasing after what we’re told to wish for, not when we’re this close. That’s what we want. Drusilla and I – we want to be _people.”_


	24. we’ll run away home

“You two all set?” Buffy asked.

“Think so, yeah,” Spike said, taking in the last of the basement. Two backpacks, three suitcases, and four more boxes were the sum total of worldly possessions he and Dru were moving across town. All of it fit on top of the table. Even piled up like that, it wasn’t a hugely impressive sight, especially not for two people. Barely more than what they’d had when they’d moved in. Buffy was pretty sure she’d have almost as much just for herself when she got her act together to move into the dorms in, yeesh, six days from now. At least the furniture wasn’t coming with.

“Then let’s move ’em on out,” she said, grabbing one of the suitcases.

The original plan was Mom would drive them over to their new place, drop them off and let them wait for the afternoon furniture delivery. Then life got in the way and she had to rush to the gallery to mediate some dispute between the contractors and the gallery staff, something about the paintings in the new café. “People just wanting to be the center of attention,” she’d tossed off before driving away with the only reliable vehicle on hand.

So Buffy got to be the adult, keep her reputation as someone who knew people who knew people and also made phone calls. Thirty-some-odd minutes later, Oz pulled up into the driveway and opened the door to his van with a flourish and an open hand, a perfect maître-d’ of a bass player. Willow and Xander and Anya had elected to come along, which with Dawn busy with middle school orientation – and since when did Dawn go to _middle school?_ – it was nice to have a few more pairs of hands around if needed. A few cables, a couple of clips, and everything was secured. The doors pulled closed behind them, and Spike’s argument for sitting up front to give directions was seconded by Oz, leaving Willow to ride in the back along with everyone else. But like she said, it was an adventure to ride in the back without a seatbelt.

“Everyone secure back there?” Oz asked, twisting around to take in the sight of everyone and the luggage.

“Reasonably so!” Dru giggled.

“Then hang on,” he said, and they were off. It was weird riding in a four-wheeled vehicle when she wasn’t facing forwards or backwards. It wasn’t big enough to pretend she was on a train, either. She stood up and wobbled three steps to lean against the back of the Spike’s seat and suddenly instead of a kidnapping thrill-type movie she was in something with a pop hit soundtrack made for dance parties. They glided along the streets from this far up. She hadn’t appreciated how tall a vehicle a van was until now. 

“Good view from up here,” Buffy said, and meant it.

“Sometimes,” said Oz, and signaled to turn.

When they got to the apartment complex, parking wasn’t so much an issue – Spike directed him into the apartment’s designated spot – as the fact that the furniture delivery guys had come and gone already. What looked like all the furniture Spike and Dru expected to come in the evening was waiting out by the mailboxes, a whole apartment out on the curb. At least they’d left a note, a yellow memo-pad sheet taped to the mattress tied to the bedframe.

“Nice bookcases,” Anya said, running her hands over the wood. “Good table, full set of chairs. How’d you get all this?”

“Graduate students who’ve managed to graduate,” Dru explained, leaning over and crossing her arms on one of the chairs. “We lucked into a package deal last Thursday.”

“Sorry we didn’t see you, we waited ten minutes, and oh bollocks, they just didn’t want to bother with the stairs when they saw there wasn’t a lift,” Spike said, crumpling the note and sticking it in his pocket. “Bleeding wankers.” 

“They’re right, though. This place really should be ADA compliant by now. We could write to the mayor about it.”

“A nice idea that won’t fix the problem we’ve got right in front of us. Which one of you wants to help us lug all this up a single blasted flight of stairs?”

“I nominate Xander,” Anya said. “He’s quite strong.”

“Hey! And thanks, but mostly hey.”

“I second Xander’s nomination,” Willow said. “I also nominate Buffy.”

“What?” Buffy whipped her head around to make sure she heard that right. 

But her and Xander at one end of the couch and Spike at the other was enough collective manpower to get the thing up and moving – Xander muttering both she and Spike were stronger than they looked – with the only hitch coming at the turn around the stairs.

“Left. Left! Turn it _left_ for God’s sake!”

“My left or your left?” 

“You – well, turn it bloody _north_ , then!”

But they managed to get it up the stairs, Dru guiding them down the walkway and into the apartment and down the hallway into its proper resting spot. Then they did it again with the bed and mattress, the couch having been a good practice run for pivoting and turning together. At least the table was light enough that Oz and Dru managed that okay, Anya and Willow coming up after them with the chairs slung over their arms. Up and down for heavy things, up and down for little things, up and down and up and down, one last trip for all the boxes because there were plenty to go around, and Spike had been right to move the couch so early because it gave people a place to sit back and watch the action happen.

Dru tried to wave them off. “We’ve got unpacking to see to. You’ve all got better things for your day than watching us settle in.”

“Not really, no,” Buffy said. “Nobody’s working today and I’ll take this as a good reason to put off packing. I’m providing valuable moral support here.” 

“Suit yourselves,” Spike said. “Can’t promise anything’s –”

“Hey!” Dawn stood in the doorway, dropping two big paper bags just inside the apartment. “You didn’t say it’d be this nice.”

“Is orientation over already?” Buffy asked, scooting aside.

“Yeah. Got my new card and everything. See,” she plopped down next to Buffy and pulled it out from her backpack to show everyone. “I followed your advice,” she said to Spike. “Just thought of something I loved and got a real big smile.”

“That’s definitely a smile, all right,” Willow said.

“Thanks.” She leaned back into the cushions. “Are you unpacked yet?”

“We haven’t even done any inventorying,” Spike said.

“You guys want – wait, before you do, we got you stuff.” She dashed back to the bags. “We were going to give these to you anyway. Summers housewarming gifts.”

“Was I supposed to bring you gifts? I’m sorry if I was supposed to and didn’t know. I can rush out and get you something.”

“This is as much a surprise to us as you,” Dru said. “What’s in these?”

“But I should’ve remembered it’s a common social convention. Xander, we should go out and get them something. Do you need toilet paper?”

“Stuff from me and Mom and Buffy. Open them.” Onto the table they went, Spike pulling out the first parcel and ripping the wrapping paper.

“Anya, you don’t – though now that you mention it that _is_ a pretty thoughtful – no, you don’t,” Xander said.

“Oh, bloody hell,” Spike breathed. “Dru, look at what she got for us!”

“Those are from me,” Dawn said. When she’d picked them out, insisting on paying for them with her own saved allowance money, Buffy had been surprised at Dawn’s choice and impressed at how thoughtful a gift they were: two large, fluffy bathrobes, perfect for Sunday morning lounging or just a little more time without having to put on pants. “I just thought…”

“No need, pigeon, no need,” he said. “It’s lovely.”

“And so soft,” Dru breathed, running her hands over them, then grabbing one and twirling it around before putting it on to try it out. “This one I’m laying claim to.”

“But that’s the blue one,” said Xander. “Not the pink.”

“Your point being?” Oz asked.

“Just…never mind.”

“Blue goes better with her hair anyway,” Spike said. “What else have we got?”

From Mom, some art for hanging. Already framed, too. They were small original pieces, tasteful California landscapes, plus a note on earmarking a couple gallery pieces that came through with some information on how to pay in installments. And from Buffy, books. Plenty of them, enough to quintuple their home library, including a couple that made Spike cry out in glee and one that had Dru gasp and clutch it to her chest like a lost-and-found childhood stuffed animal. Too many books to carry around, no matter how much they were loved. Books to say they’d settled in on living here for a while. With the presents done, Dawn excused herself, hugging Spike and Dru goodbye, leaving everybody else the option of sitting around or leaving too.

They all opted for farewells, some fond and some just polite. Buffy was the last to leave, promising to come by for dinner as soon as they got their kitchen in order and really, honestly meaning it. Maybe Monday, maybe Tuesday, but soon. She waved goodbye, closing the door behind her.

Xander dawdled behind Anya to walk next to Buffy. “Hey, if you don’t mind my asking,” he started, sticking his hands in his pockets, “is your mom still open to the idea of basement residents?”

“I can ask, if you want.”

“Because if she is, I was just thinking, if I’m going to pay rent to live in a basement somewhere I’d rather not do it for my parents.”

“They’re charging you _rent?_ Seriously? Yeah, I think she might be willing to arrange something for you. Let’s go ask her.”

Buffy glanced back at the apartments as they drove away. She could imagine them unpacking the boxes of household goods, sheeting up the bed and putting the mugs away, going out later to stock up on detergent and peroxide. She could picture Dru striding around the place, holding her doll like a baby and telling it all about what they’d done that day. And she could see Spike sitting at the table or on the bed or just cross-legged on the floor, counting out all his jewelry, doing the same inventory he did at every new place he went to. Two years had been the longest time they’d spent anywhere in, well, the longest time. Not even that, the middle of autumn through the end of summer and then all over again.

It wouldn’t take them that much time to beat their new record. Wouldn’t take them that long at all.


	25. all the glow of youth inside the room is burning on inside of you

Dawn unlocked her bike from the rack, folded up the baskets, clipped her helmet to her chin, and tightened her backpack’s straps for good measure. She glanced back at Spike and Dru’s apartment before she leaned forward and pushed off, coasting through the parking lot and onto the street, signaling a left turn and starting to pedal her way down the end-of-summer hot afternoon street, and like that, she was off to an adventure. Even if it didn’t turn out to be that exciting, it was at least going to be an exploration. She was going somewhere she’d never been before, to personally map the last little strange corner of Sunnydale. She was going to the factory.

It wasn’t _exactly_ off limits. Nobody ever said she wasn’t allowed to go inside, and after a while, keep-out signs didn’t count if nobody checked them anymore. All the dangerous equipment was gone, and nobody in school even thought it might be haunted. She’d asked Xander and Willow about it, too, and Anya a couple of times. The whole place had shut down before any of them were ever born, and maybe if it stayed empty for a while longer it’d start showing up in local ghost stories. But it wasn’t old enough to have anything ghosty or haunty creeping around inside at night. Definitely not since Spike and Dru moved out.

Dawn pedaled down the streets, making turn signals and obeying traffic lights. She didn’t want to tire herself out before she got there. She’d gone past it plenty of times, but this was her first time heading over. Biking out to it, not just stopping across the street to stare at the only building in all of Sunnydale that looked like it could’ve come from LA.

She biked past new houses, middle-aged houses, older houses, apartments and office clusters into Sunnydale’s downtown. By now she knew exactly which turns to take to get to the Bronze, the little bookstore, the comic shop, the used bookstore because this was still a college town – she didn’t need to think about it anymore. She could turn on autopilot and think about something besides which spot on the rack was the best one to park her bike if she wanted to head to the Co-Op and buy a fancy Mexican strawberry soda.

Dru had told Dawn about her and Spike getting their lives in order even on top of the work of moving and the work of their jobs. Adult-type stuff like joining a credit union so they wouldn’t have to have Mom cash their paychecks under the table. Looking for furniture and making lists of stuff grown-ups just had around, like Windex and yellow gloves. Stuff that Dawn knew they should do.

Their apartment wasn’t way, way out of town, or even out of town. A little more than half the distance between Revello Drive and the factory. But anywhere they went would mean she couldn’t walk down a flight of stairs and knock on a door to say hi and start talking to people she knew would really understand her.

She glanced over her shoulder and went across four lanes of road to make a big right turn. Not that there were a lot of cars out driving this time of day or week anyway. It was a California summer day, which meant blue skies and dry heat. It was also a _late_ California summer day, which meant everyone was worried about pools closing and school starting and how the greens on the trees and grasses were finally starting to fade and get yellowy at the edges. It mostly meant not a lot of people were out doing anything. They were inside, at work or at home or at a friend’s house or the movies. But going on an adventure, even if there weren’t a lot of people around, you had to be careful not to attract too much attention.

Dawn parked her bike at the edge of the fence, behind the big oleander bushes. She looped the bike lock through her helmet strap and then looped that through the fence, locking everything together before she set on off. The _no trespassing_ and _private property_ signs were fine and dandy, but they were around the front, not off to the side. Not over here, where the big hole in the fence was just from people forgetting stuff had to be replaced and thinking the bushes would be enough of a deterrent. What Dad sometimes joked was _benign neglect_ , as if neglect could be benign. Harmless, maybe, but not benign. Not in Dawn’s book.

Under the bushes and through the fence, through even more bushes – if both sides had grown up like this, no wonder it’d gotten all holey, since nobody could _see_ it – and then she stood at the edge of a big empty space, with the factory almost looming in the distance. Not quite, because it wasn’t that far away or that big a building, not really, but the amount of nothing all around her made it look bigger.

That was something she could say for Sunnydale that Los Angeles never did: space for nothing. She looked around, in all directions but behind her, and there was a lot of open air that would leave her vulnerable if it wasn’t for the whole property hidden by the oleander. She’d have to wash her hands before she ate anything because everybody knew oleander was completely poisonous. Maybe that was why they’d put them in. The flowers were pretty, and you’d die if you touched them and then ate anything without washing your hands first. But thinking about that was a distraction from what she came out here to do, which was walk across the pavement and asphalt broken up by neglect and grass growing up in between all the cracks it could find. Walk right up to the old factory like she was supposed to be here just as much as it was. 

From up close, it wasn’t as huge as it seemed from the fence, but it was bigger than pretty much every other building in Sunnydale. Even the campus buildings didn’t look like they were this big.

There were faint outlines on the ground from the space that must have been a parking lot. She didn’t know what the numbers meant, or what all the lines used to be for, but it was probably the same stuff in every parking lot. It would’ve said who could park where and where not to park and what all the spots were for. There wasn’t a _trespassing right this way_ sign, just ones for loading and unloading docks, and warnings about electric voltage and operating heavy machines. She walked the whole building, wondering how Spike and Dru had gotten in when she didn’t see any broken windows. But if the whole place had been abandoned, probably nobody had locked it up behind them, so that meant it was of course worth trying the obvious thing and just pushing a door open. And walking through.

It was the biggest empty space she’d ever seen _inside_ anywhere. Even more empty than a big church or an ice skating rink. Those had seats. The factory had a whole lot of nothing.

“Hey!” She shouted, hearing it echo, _ey – he – ye – hey_. “Hey,” she whispered, just for herself. Nobody called back, not even any crows, so she was probably as alone in here as she could be. The place was all hers to poke around and see what there was to find. Pipes, tanks, grates, broken lights, girders, nothing she wanted to touch with her bare hands. Even if she didn’t already have to wash them. She took two steps up one of the stairs wrapping around a tank and then jumped back to the floor. It was cold enough she could feel it through her sneakers and almost wished she’d brought a sweatshirt.

Dawn carefully sipped the water she’d brought with her as she kept looking around. The high windows would have been great when people worked in here all day: they’d have gotten some light that wasn’t just the hanging lamps. She looked up at the gears and cables by the ceiling and kept walking deeper inside. Forget a sweatshirt; she should’ve gotten a Swiss army knife. Something to stab someone with if they jumped out of the shadows. But okay, if there weren’t ghost stories there probably weren’t any _real_ dangerous stories, or else she’d have heard something from someone. She hadn’t, so that meant she didn’t have to worry.

Each step inside got the place more and more mapped out in her head. And around that corner, down that way, not too far down that way, was a door. A fairly surprising door, because it didn’t look like anything else inside the factory. It had a frosted glass window which was somehow still intact and a nice-looking doorknob. This was a good sign, because a door like that was exactly the sort of thing that made for a good adventure story.

So she opened it.

It said _office_ on the glass, and that’s what it looked like inside. A little private space for doing hard thinking and making serious decisions, which was how Dad had described his office to her once and the way she still thought of them. It was the only person-sized room in the whole building. The furniture was still around, like they hadn’t needed to take any of it with them when it closed. They probably hadn’t emptied out all the cabinets. But even if it was still here in the office, the desk was out in the middle of the room, not off in a thinking corner, and some chairs were around it so more than one person could sit there at a time. There were a couple of big red metal buckets, one half-full of ashes and charred bits of newspaper, and a big plastic garbage can with empty water bottles and food wrappers.

Then Dawn saw why the desk was where it was: it’d been dividing the room in half. One half was the side she was standing on, with the desk and the chairs, and the other – she had to walk around the desk to see – was something she’d never have thought to find in an old factory. It was a bed. Sort of a bed. Enough of one she knew that what she was looking at.

No wonder the office hadn’t been as dusty as the rest of the factory. Someone had been in here not too long ago. She was where Spike and Dru had been before they’d moved into the basement. They must’ve eaten their food at the desk like it was a table, which was why all the chairs were there. They’d kept things tidy with the buckets and garbage can. One of Spike’s small object arrangements was sitting on top of a cabinet. It felt kind of cozy, the bed off in one corner and the table off on the other side of the room. Dawn could imagine living here, if she wanted to run away from home and not leave town.

Once, she’d asked Dru where she’d slept before she’d moved into the basement. _In a bed,_ she’d told her. Like it was so obvious because that’s where people slept. Of course she’d slept in a bed. This bed was a little bit like a nest, almost like when she and Buffy had pulled pillows together for blanket forts and sort of played house. Like Spike and Drusilla had almost been – almost…

Oh.

_Buffy’s not asleep she’s not sleeping this isn’t good she’s not waking up there’s something wrong there’s something wrong Buffy she’s not Buffy she’s not waking up BUFFY –_

Dawn blinked, and everything was different. She was standing in an empty, dusty room, inside a building that should’ve been torn down years ago, and she was looking at a mattress and a pile of blankets. It wasn’t a nest. But it was the closest they’d been able to come to having a bed of their own without a place to live. An old, scrounged-up mattress, and thin, cold blankets. Because they’d played house, too. Because playing house was all they’d been able to do.

They’d both told her how much trouble they’d had for a long time about trying to live with people. How it’d started with them traveling with another couple, but then they’d went away so Spike and Dru did what they could, looking for places to share. How they’d gone to squat-houses, getting to stay because a man and a woman traveling together was usually pretty safe. And they’d usually done okay for a while but then everyone would figure out Dru was crazier than she’d pretended, or Spike broke a rule he hadn’t known existed and nobody told him he needed to follow, and they’d have to leave and find somewhere else to stay. That soon they’d started leaving before they got kicked out and they usually ransacked everything before they went, taking everyone’s good stuff, money and things to sell, so they could keep going for a while longer. And then they’d stopped trying to live with other people and just stayed by themselves. They’d found places like the factory instead of squats or communes. Places where nobody would find out they were crazy and get all scared and tell them to leave.

They’d told her how the worst part of being homeless was how nobody ever looked at them. The way nobody saw them, how everyone pretended they didn’t exist. That after a while, they almost didn’t expect to show up in mirrors anymore, that they wouldn’t have a reflection to even see themselves.

Dawn left the office and closed the door behind her. She looked up at the ceiling and the dust playing around in the light. Then she took a deep breath and took the cold, loud air all the way inside, and let it out all slow.

Maybe this was why the factory was the only piece of Sunnydale that felt anything like Los Angeles. It’d been left over and forgotten and shouldn’t be around anymore.

Because it was the only place in Sunnydale for people who’d been left over and forgotten, and who hadn’t had anywhere else to go.


	26. I didn’t like the love I liked the climate

Whenever anyone asked her how she got a single as a freshman, Buffy always gave the disappointing truth: she’d already lived in Sunnydale, so she’d been able to go to the student housing office the day applications opened up and hand-deliver hers to the secretary first thing in the morning.

What she didn’t tell them was Willow’s dad had made a phone call. Yes, she’d put in her application first thing in the morning just like she’d said, and also yes, one of the school’s big names called in a favor. A small favor – tiny, really. An itty-bitty one for his daughter’s best friend. Buffy had a chance of getting a single room as a freshman because she’d done all the right paperwork and turned everything in on time. He’d just made sure it happened.

It was probably what traveling with Darla had been like. Someone made a phone call to the people behind the scenes and everything in the world fell into place for you.

Willow was up at Berkeley, trying for a balance of modern feminism and computer science. Buffy was sure if she’d stayed home, he would’ve made a different but similar phone call about their roommate requests – all the paperwork properly submitted, of course. Berkeley was another UC school; her dad could’ve called a friend of a friend and had his people call her people to make sure Willow got exactly the living situation she wanted. Which was whatever roommate the system threw at her. She’d never had a sibling and wanted to try a shared space under controlled circumstances to see what it was like.

Buffy didn’t want to push her limits on top of all the other usual stresses of college. She could’ve stayed home, commuting by bike just like Willow’s dad, but she wanted her own controlled circumstances. She’d paced the empty dorm room, taking in the wall-to-wall industrial sea-green carpet fuzz, the not-a-rocking-chair at the desk right under the window, the dresser at the foot of the bed, the complimentary desk lamp. It wasn’t that she had way less closet space than she did at home: it was that in just over nine months she’d be moving out of here and no matter how much she liked it she’d be – she’d be working hard to enjoy every single day and night she spent in this dorm room because she’d worked hard to be here and maybe she’d be leaving it behind but that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy it while she was living inside it. Because fuck that noise.

Well. Fuck it sometimes, and other times buy it a hot cup of coffee and listen to it because she was sick, she was ill, she was crazy, and she was still here.

She left her old posters at home and started fresh with fairy lights, a Van Gogh, an O’Keeffe, a Hopper, and about forty postcards from different shows Mom had put on in the last three years. Maybe she’d send them out when she was done with college. Maybe she’d just use them as bookmarks. The world was wide open and full of possibilities. Provided, at least, she got some slippers to deal with the industrial fuzz.

Classes themselves were like she was still in high school, except slightly less so. Two of her teachers didn’t even take attendance; apparently that was only a thing if there were twenty or fewer students a class, like the senior music theory seminar where all they did was hang out and listen to John Cage and Led Zeppelin. For big freshman lectures that fulfilled basic requirements, as long as you showed up for tests and turned in the work, you didn’t need to be there every day. Buffy went every day. With her hair in place, her eyeliner flawless, with earrings and lipstick carefully selected and just the right amount of blush. Dru wasn’t the only one who armored herself for the day by putting on her face.

She thought she’d seen Dru around. Spike, definitely. A couple of times early in the semester she’d been out wandering through campus, or down some hallways, and there was never going to be any not recognizing that hair. She knew he couldn’t hear her through those headphones he always wore, but there was still a lot of quietly turning back around and walking away before he noticed her. And after a while, she’d stopped seeing him around at all, even when she was kind of looking for him. Not to have a conversation, just to see him. Take visual note of his existence. It wasn’t only that she knew she’d feel kind of awkward going to talk to him, the sort of awkward that just got worse the more time passed in between conversations. It was that, and what little social status she was getting together wouldn’t do well if people also knew she was friends with the cleaning staff.

Yes, those people weren’t the people she wanted as friends, she knew that all by heart. She also knew just being friendly with people was hard enough and she didn’t want to make it any harder.

What she did was smile, keep track of her medications and moods, tried to get enough food and sleep and exercise, did her best to get to know the people around her and keep her grades solid and her head high, and put on her face every morning to take on the world. Some days she could take on more of it than others, but as long as she could keep on taking it, she would. As worlds to take on went, college wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it might be. There were books to read, there was boxing practice, there were movie screenings, there was a night with a guy that Dr. Lin said was a _casual sexual experience_ which Buffy found a lot nicer than going out and fucking someone like she’d used to do.

The outside world was easy to forget about when she was all ensconced from it on campus. It still shouldn’t have been as big a surprise as it was when November came around.

“She’s invited everyone,” Mom said. “She’ll even pay for the tickets.”

“You know I love Aunt Arlene and you know how much I love Chicago and seeing all the Ferris Bueller sights, but this is the first time in months my friends are all going to be in town.” She wrapped her hands around the restaurant’s diner-style mug. “I was just thinking we might, you know, do something together.”

“All right.” Mom leaned back in her chair. “We could come back a day early.”

“That wasn’t quite what I’d meant.”

“Were you thinking of not going?”

“Well.” Buffy tried to smile, did her best to explain her case, and that evening she called Giles to see if he wanted to come to a Buffy-hosted Thanksgiving dinner. 

“I’m not a student so there’s no ethical violations whatsoever. I know you’ll have the day off. Just show up and eat. It’s going to be catered, not a potluck. How does that sound to you?”

“It sounds great,” Willow said, and Buffy could imagine her twisting her own dorm’s phone cord around her fingers. “Mom and Dad like to spend Friday as our hiking in the woods and not buying anything day, but Thursday I’ll definitely be free. Do you need me to bring anything?”

“Well – can you bake?”

“It’s awkward enough living in your mom’s basement and paying my rent via laundry duty. I’m not asking for permission to raid the pantry for flour and baking soda.” Xander waited for the cashier to ring up his burrito and stuffed the change in the tip jar before joining Buffy and Anya at the best of the cheap off-campus dining options. “We’ll show up and eat your food, but if we’re doing it at your place then I’ll just get up early and be your sous chef.”

“I don’t bake,” Anya said.

“What, at all?”

“I’m sure I could follow the instructions and get something perfectly edible, but it’s not an activity I’ve ever done before. This dinner is important enough to you that you should find someone with previous baking experience instead of having me try out something new.”

“I shouldn’t want to argue that,” Giles said. Buffy leaned against her closet door and closed her eyes, trying not to sigh too loudly through the phone. “If you absolutely can’t use your own house, I’ll happily volunteer my apartment. Provided you let me know ahead of time how many people are attending.”

“There’s going to be you, me, Xander, Anya, Willow –”

“I don’t think Oz can make it,” Willow said, her voice shaky on the dorm room’s answering machine playback. “I tried calling him and the manager said they were still on tour so I guess count him as a maybe.”

“I’m not coming,” Dawn said, browsing through the UC Sunnydale library to pick two books, just two, for Buffy to check out for her as a special treat. “Not because I don’t think you can pull this off. You can definitely pull something like this off yourself. It’s because –”

“Because you love Chicago and plane rides. It’s okay. I’ll take a picture or something.”

“Yeah, I’m not coming up to Sunnydale for one meal,” said Cordelia.

“Couldn’t hurt to ask,” Buffy said. “I was just – you enjoy what you do for the day, okay?”

“You know I will.”

“Yeah, we can make it. We can definitely make it. When’s it going to be?” Spike asked, his voice clear over the phone. “Late afternoon, early evening?”

“Let’s compromise for six.”

“We can _definitely_ make that. You need us to bring anything?”

_Find someone with previous baking experience,_ baking experience like those cakes and scones and – “Dinner rolls?”

“That a question or a request?”

“Both.”

A moment of silence on his end. Then, “Yeah, we can manage rolls. Anything else?”

Buffy knew her limits pretty well by this point of her life. She knew where her actual limits were, and where she just thought they were because she’d never had to push herself to really find out. But she knew that with everything she was already doing, all the work she was taking on, while she would welcome the challenge under different circumstances, this time she drew the line at making a pie crust from scratch.

In the end, as nice as it would’ve been to stagger upstairs and collapse in her bed without having to leave the house at any point during the day, the thought of _really_ going home after dinner, even if Mom and Dawn weren’t there and Xander was residing in the basement, won out. Mom helped by buying Buffy the raw ingredients ahead of time, and Xander helped by carrying them over to Giles’ place where he was already getting the kitchen ready. Buffy thanked him, shooed him out, rolled up her sleeves, and got to work. One thing at a time, of many things at a time. Dicing, mincing, stirring. Chopping, basting, mixing. A pinch and a dash, a hint and a sprinkle and maybe just a smidgen more, a spoonful for the cook to taste and a cup of tea to keep her on her feet. Calling out greetings to everyone who arrived and rationing out the tinfoil. Almost forgetting to take off her apron when the doorbell rang just an hour to go before the meal, and when she opened the door to the last two stragglers, her first thought was: she’d _never_ seen Drusilla in a dress before.

Her second was: no _wonder_ she hadn’t recognized Spike.

Her first words, though, were: “You remembered the rolls?”

“Right here,” Dru handed over two giant tote bags, completely incongruous to her actually really nice red dress. “Exactly as I learned to make them. No changes or subtractions.”

“Yeah. This is enough to feed an army, almost.”

“A full convent, at least,” Spike said. Dru’s dress was surprising enough, but –

“Sorry,” Buffy said, trying not to stare. “I just – I didn’t know it was brown.” Spike laughed, his hair a completely unnaturally natural color. “Did you re-dye it?”

“Just shaved the whole thing and let it grow back. Mind if we come in?” He hefted his own tote bags, all his nails looking freshly painted for the occasion. “This needs to stay cold.”

“Right! Sorry. Just, come in.” They followed her to the kitchen, saying hi to everyone as they went. “That’s a really nice dress.”

“Thank you.”

“So this dessert…” She pulled out a couple of Tupperware containers and peered inside, not sure what she was looking at.

“We thought, something old world and new would be fitting,” said Spike. “It comes in parts, so we’ll put it together right when it’s served.”

“Is this a cranberry thing?” It had to be, what with that shade of red. There was already a pot of the sauce simmering away quite happily.

“It’s a fool,” Dru said, standing proud.

“A fool?”

“Fruit and cold custard,” he explained. “You layer it up just as you serve it. We brought some little cups in case you didn’t have any.”

“As English as the River Thames,” said Dru.

Spike began putting the assorted components into the fridge. “Like we’d thought, old world, new world, it seemed fitting for the spirit of the day.”

“Well, it…” It was something of a redundancy, what with the cranberry sauce. It wasn’t exactly a great balance to the rest of the meal, since she’d thought it’d be another cake. It’d be more dishes to wash – if not her, then someone else, and they’d all have to be prepared before serving instead of just cutting it up at the table. And it… it was going to taste delicious, and it was all going to be fine. “You know, it really is. Now you go mingle. The turkey needs more basting and that’s something you really can’t do with an audience.”

The mingling went okay, from what she could overhear. The dinner went great – words of grace for the breaking of bread between friends and different kinds of family, everyone pacing themselves as they ate to make sure they had some of everything, conversation about what had changed and what they still had in common, stories everyone knew and anecdotes nobody had heard before. Giles was delighted at the fools, and Buffy held herself back from about a half-dozen jokes about the name of the dessert. Nobody needed them right now. 

It was that they hadn’t laughed at her name that first made her like them. She’d introduced herself and Spike and Drusilla accepted it like it was any other name, and she’d been surprised enough to ask them why, and they’d said, _What’s funny about being named for Buffy Sainte-Marie?_ Not just not laughing, but also knowing where it’d come from. That was how she’d come to like them. It’d made her think maybe she could get to know them, too. She hadn’t known what she’d been getting into, getting to know them, bringing them into her life. If she had, she’d probably have done it anyway.

She went so far as to hug them good-night. They both hugged her back. Everyone wanted to try this again next year, if at all possible. Though maybe at Buffy’s house, if that could be arranged.

“Let’s see what happens,” she said, ready to meet the future when it arrived.


	27. lay me down and she’s supplanted

Getting into the Buffy fandom right now feels kind of like trying to drink the ocean. Swimming across it is similarly impossible. Navigating it, with charts and maps and the right kinds of tools, is about manageable if I pay attention to where I’m going. Rec lists, trusted friends, known authors, bookmarks, tags, fic keywords and bulletproof tropes all helped guide me around this new and strange fandom I’d decided to explore. Some sailing was rough, a bit of it smooth, all of it giving me a pretty good time.

Except, somehow, there was somewhere nobody had sailed to yet. I looked around, asked around, checked as thoroughly as I could. I found out there were a few places like it that people already knew, but nothing quite like what I could see. A few people had talked about it but hadn’t gone there. I saw it so clearly, I couldn’t believe nobody traveled there yet, and I couldn’t understand how I might be the first one to do just that.

It was because nobody else had traveled there yet that I knew I had to go.

-

I’d like to thank [benicebefunny](http://benicebefunny.tumblr.com/), [bmouse](http://bmouse.tumblr.com/), [court_of_ocelot](http://court-of-ocelot.tumblr.com/), [ifeelbetterer](http://ifeelbetterer.tumblr.com/), [kelasparmak](http://kelasparmak.tumblr.com/), [Petra](https://petra.dreamwidth.org/), [the-rck](https://the-rck.dreamwidth.org/), and [tijuanabiblestudies](http://tijuanabiblestudies.tumblr.com/) for early words of encouragement about the basic concept, for the chats and conversations that helped shape the narrative and themes before I started writing, for holding my hand and helping with the incidental word or phrase once the writing began, and for keeping me on track and holding me accountable with my ongoing progress until I finished. As well as anyone I might have forgotten.

For beta-reading, I’d like to thank [bonibaru](https://bonibaru.dreamwidth.org/), [Maristu](https://maristu.dreamwidth.org/), and [oldtoadwoman](https://oldtoadwoman.dreamwidth.org/) for digging in deep and being both harsh and fair about what needed to be done. The [DavisWiki](https://localwiki.org/davis/) deserves its own grand and glorious shout-out.

Gratitude goes out to [Tinsnip](http://tinsnip.tumblr.com/) for pharmaceutical reference and [ZiGraves](http://zigraves.tumblr.com/) for London consultation, [Snickfic](http://snickfic.dreamwidth.org/) who got me interested in participating in the fandom, and to everyone who offered and suggested music, too many to list here and all of you with impeccably good taste.

And finally, [inkandcaynne](http://inkandcayenne.tumblr.com/), for being the one who offered up her couch and got me to start watching the show in the first place. I wouldn’t have written this at all if she hadn’t been there, so any additional blame or credit is entirely on her shoulders.  
-

Part of why I wrote this was because I couldn’t believe nobody had written anything like it already, and because I wanted to strip away the fantastic, metaphoric conditions to better show exactly what it was that I recognized about the characters and what about them kept whispering to me.

Though I’ll admit, a decent amount was because I’ve wanted to write something with misheard lyrics as story or chapter titles for ages now. Given how fitting it was for the subject matter, I knew its time had finally arrived.

_The Geese of Beverly Road, The National_

_1\. Things That Scare Me, Neko Case_  
 _2\. Lookin’ Out My Back Door, Creedence Clearwater Revival_  
 _3\. Maybe I’ll Come Down, Mike Doughty_  
 _4\. Song for Judee, case/lang/veirs_  
 _5\. Paper Bag, Anna Nalick_  
 _6\. I’m Like a Bird, Nelly Furtado_  
 _7\. (Good Riddance) Time of Your Life, Green Day_  
 _8\. Lucy Can’t Dance, David Bowie_  
 _9\. Magpie to the Morning, Neko Case_  
 _10\. Anna Begins, Counting Crows_  
 _11\. The Seed, Hem_  
 _12\. Trouble, Voxtrot_  
 _13\. 1 2 3 4, Feist_  
 _14\. Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen_  
 _15\. Rudie Can’t Fail, The Clash_  
 _16\. Shelter, Ben Nichols_  
 _17\. Anything Could Happen, Ellie Goulding_  
 _18\. Closer to Me, Dar Williams_  
 _19\. Slow Show, The National_  
 _20\. Crash into Me, Stevie Nicks_  
 _21\. Somebody Got Murdered, The Clash_  
 _22\. A Case of You, Joni Mitchell_  
 _23\. Willesden to Cricklewood, Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros_  
 _24\. Two of Us, Aimee Mann and Michael Penn_  
 _25\. Monday Morning, Death Cab for Cutie_  
 _26\. As Cool as I Am, Dar Williams_  
 _27\. Tiny Dancer, Elton John_


End file.
